Marseilles, France
A detective surveilles a meeting and trails one of them. Afterward, he buys himself some bread and heads back to his apartment. He has hardly opened the door when an assassin guns him down.
New York City
Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) takes down a drug dealer while dressed as Santa Claus. His partner, Buddy "Cloudy" Russo (Roy Scheider) suffered a knife-wounded during the arrest. Rather than go home, Popeye convinced Cloudy to get a drink. This soon turns into a stakeout of Sal Boca, a convenience store owner with a criminal record. Popeye has a hunch that something big is coming and Sal is part of it. However, the mastermind of the drug dealers, Alain Charnier (Fernado Rey) is quite clever himself. He quickly spots Popeye following him and takes measures to lose him.
It is a gritty movie that spends the majority of its time in the dark underbelly of New York's drug culture. It's cops, drug dealers, and innocent bystanders. As the Charnier and his sidekick are French, they only speak French to each other; the Amazon version of the film has no subtitles, making their conversations a mystery.
Gene Hackman won the Academy Award for his role as Doyle. Doyle is a loose cannon cop with anger management issues and poor taste in hats. To the positive, he is a workaholic with a nose for finding the bad guys. Overall, he is not a particularly likeable person. He's abrasive and abusive. On the other hand, he has an endless supply of persistence. Hackman's range as an actor was truly impressive. He could be hard-as-nails dangerous (this movie or Unforgiven), funny and devious (Lex Luthor from the Superman series), or goofy and harmless (Young Frankenstein). RIP
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