'Popeye' Doyle (an Academy Award-winning Gene Hackman) and Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider) are tough New York cops attempting to crack a drug smuggling ring. They have a small candy store under surveillance, but Doyle is not happy when he receives the order to work with a pair of French federal agents on the case, one of whom he has a long-standing feud with. Gene Hackman and director William Friedkin both earned Academy Awards for the film, which also took Best Picture. The legendary car chase and the bleak, ambiguous ending remain amongst the greatest sequences in American movies of the 1970s. Also includes "French Connection 2".