The French Connection

Either I have a blind spot, or there is an appeal to this sort of movie that completely escapes me.  The "based on a true story" crime drama probably has few better examples than this one, but it still left me wondering why I should care.  Perhaps I've pigeonholed myself into a mindset where I watch movies, especially those on the AFI list, with an expectation that they will be great, rather than merely serviceable.  Perhaops my working definition of "great"--namely that there should be a compelling reason for the film to exist, and that the individual elements of the film should live up in quality to that necessity--is narrow and short-sighted.  Perhaps I'm just a fuddy-duddy who doesn't see the point of these movies (this last is unlikely).

At any rate, the only pont I can think of in this film's favor is its decidedly postmodernist ending.  The ultimately frustrating wrap-up could easily have been the result of a Coen brothers collaboration, and perhaps it is this refusal to satisfy, along with certain technical elements and its place as the first R-rated movie to win the Academy Award, that prompted the AFI to have added it to its list.  And perhaps it is the films overall averageness by modern standards that caused it to drop to 93rd place on the most recent edition of the list.