Pierre (Jean Dujardin) is a good French cop we can admire; Tany (Gilles Lellouche) is a drug lord we can like despite his murderous heroin. The Connection, loosely based on incidents surrounding the infamous French Connection, both real and depicted in William Friedkin's 1971 award-winning thriller starring Gene Hackman. If you can separate yourself from the testosterone-fueled business, you will experience a thriller of humane proportions.
Pierre has taken over the magistrate's responsibility for mob activity, and heroin is the big enemy. Writer-director Cedric Jimenez and writer Audrey Diwan expertly navigate between his daily professional activity and after-work family life with a wife and two children. When it's revealed that Pierre had an addictive gambling problem, the audience is appreciative of his weakness but cognizant of his obsessive personality, such as pursuing Tany.
The film also shows mobster Tany in his two worlds of business and family. While the director may too frequently parallel edit the two characters in these roles, he successfully reveals two characters with traits we can understand.
Beyond the inevitable blood, of which there is less than might be expected, is the oft-told tale of highly-driven men who want successful careers and happy family life—those of us who have seen many such thrillers know the balance is impossible. In a way the film draws us into each sphere with responses more sympathetic than judgmental.
The pace of The Connection is frenetic between paralleling the two principles' activities and chronicling the confrontations (I like when the two meet at a remote spot in a low-key, un-macho response for both) many of which are hair-raising heists and busts. Just as often, however, the film slows it down to a daily level that draws in our attention to the little things of life yet keeps the suspense and terror in the background.
As in A Most Violent Year, starring Oscar Isaac about a good but going-bad business man in NYC in the early '80's, so too does The Connection make that lawless time, albeit European, seductive because Dujardin is so compelling while he breaks laws to stop crime. It's ironic and complicated. That's life, and that's Chinatown, Jake.
