William Friedkin (1971)
This was the first and best of the early 1970s films that featured a new dramatic partnership: the hero and the heroin. William Friedkin’s direction really is dazzlingly effective – it blinds you to how crude this violent crime thriller’s suspense devices actually are. The picture’s principal, all-purpose means of getting hold of the audience is noise, especially the crash-bang-wallop of fist fights and the din of New York traffic jams. As the soundtrack gets louder, Jerry Greenberg’s cutting is faster and ever defter. Gene Hackman is formidably insensitive as the cop protagonist Popeye Doyle, Roy Scheider is his sidekick, Fernando Rey the suavely elusive Mr Big of the drugs world whom they doggedly and unavailingly pursue. This tale of narks and narcotics is, on its own terms, almost flawless. The terms aren’t likeable, though.
[1970s]
