October 5, 1971 [The French Connection]

I took my son to see his first R-rated movie, The French Connection--not the worst pick, the movie its own kind of Boy's Adventure--with heroin as the treasure and villains with accents, plus challenges and tunnels, runaway trains and hair-raising chases--at least one, Popeye Doyle in a real-life Bumper Car near-missing babies and other innocents.

New York looks the part, too: under a dark spell, all shadows and wet trash at your feet, the subway platform grimy--but Popeye and his partner (Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider, both of them expecting the worst while bullets and B.S. assail them) sip their cold coffee and wait--and wait and wait, the bad guys like King John in the Robin Hood stories eating and drinking while the heroes huddle in the rain.

But, as a boy's tale for grownups, The French Connection does not share the flippant almost-irony of the Bond movies. No, this one seems more interested in detailing the decline of New York, a city swarming with rats, its overworked exterminators persistent but not too hopeful. The sky lowers, the light feels dirty. My son had a good time, but I think it made him a little queasy, as though he'd eaten one of those curbside hot dogs Popeye jams in his mouth before bolting after vermin.