We first encounter NYPD narcotics detective Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman) as he beats the living crap out of a black man dressed as Santa, basically torturing a confession out of him. As the movie proceeds, we grudgingly admit to ourselves that Doyle's methods, racist and corrupt as they often are, seem to get results. Around this galvanising performance, which partakes of the wildly corrupt NYPD of the Serpico era, director William Friedkin constructs a thriller set in the decaying, near-bankrupt old city of 70s New York.
Doggedly tracking French drug-smuggler Alain Charnier (played by Luis Buñuel's star, Fernando Rey), Doyle and his partner Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider) thrive in the city's criminal underbelly, working their way up from lowly dealers and distributors to the slick top-tier padrones running the game. Tony Lo Bianco gives good sleaze here as Salvatore Boca, Charnier's local contact. Violent, bleak, and pessimistic, the movie benefits also from the single greatest car-chase – between Hackman and an elevated metro train – ever committed to film.
