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French Connection 2 movie storyline. Picking up two or three years where the original left off, narcotics officer Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman) is still searching for the elusive Frenchman drug kingpin Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey). Orders from the captain send Doyle to Marseille, France, to track down the criminal mastermind and bust his drug ring. Once in France, Doyle is met by Inspector Henri Barthélémy (Bernard Fresson), who resents his rude and crude crimefighting demeanor. Doyle then begins to find himself as a fish out of water in France, where he is matched with a language he can’t understand.
Determined to find Charnier on his own, Popeye escapes his French escorts and ends up being kidnapped by Charnier’s henchmen. For several days, Doyle is injected with heroin in effort to force him into capitulation; after he cracks and provides Charnier what he knows, he’s dumped alive but addicted in front of police headquarters.
In effort to save both his life and his reputation, Barthélémy immediately quarantines the abused and humiliated Doyle on a long and agonizing cold turkey withdrawal from the heroin. Supervising his cure, and at his side with both emotional support and taunts questioning his toughness, Barthélemy provokes Doyle to maintain through the cycle of physical withdrawal. When at length well enough to be on his feet, Doyle recalls the hideout/drug warehouse he was brought to.
Doyle is joined by Barthelemy and other inspectors for a climatic raid on Charnier and his henchmen at their hideout. After a long gun battle, the raid is successful, but Charnier escapes yet again. Doyle, in an epic foot chase of Charnier sailing out of Marseille Harbor on his yacht, takes his gun out; calls his name, and finally shoots Charnier dead as his yacht sails away.
French Connection II is a 1975 American action thriller film starring Gene Hackman and directed by John Frankenheimer. It is a fictional sequel to the initially true story of the 1971 Academy Award winning picture The French Connection. The film expands on the central character of Det. Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle who travels to Marseille, France where he is attempting to track down French drug-dealer Alain Charnier, who escaped at the end of the first film. Hackman won an Academy Award for Best Actor for the original The French Connection and he and Fernando Rey are the only returning cast members.
All about The French Connection (1971).
French Connection II (1975)
Directed by: John Frankenheimer
Starring: Gene Hackman, Fernando Rey, Bernard Fresson, Philippe Léotard, Ed Lauter, Charles Millot, Cathleen Nesbitt, Jean-Pierre Castaldi, Samantha Llorens, André Penvern, Reine Prat
Screenplay by: Alexander Jacobs, Robert Dillon, Laurie Dillon
Production Design by: Jacques Saulnier
Cinematography by: Claude Renoir
Film Editing by: Tom Rolf
Set Decoration by: Charles Merangel
Makeup Department: Alex Archambault, Monique Archambault
Music by: Don Ellis
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: May 21, 1975
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