10 Crime Films Based On Real Events
1. The French Connection Is About The Real Life Chase For Heroin Smuggler Alain Charnier
One of the most iconic crime films of all time, The French Connection will soon turn 50 years old and it’s just as good as ever. William Friedkin’s action thriller is based on Robin Moore’s book of the same name that documents detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso in pursuit of heroin smuggler Alain Charnier. The detective's names were changed for the film but stars the double team of Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider with Fernando Rey as the dealer.
The film swept up at the Oscars and has bred one of the all time most iconic chase sequences, and all these years later is one of the finest love letters to old school New York and cinema. It makes you want to embroil yourself into a life of crime or leave to feel excitement, it evokes brutalism and power.
Surprisingly, it’s not rushed but shadowy and ghosted, and it changed the way that police action movies would be made forever. Friedkin manages to make it exciting, succinctly capturing the police force as well as the world of drugs, it’s abrasive, with documentary-like realism. It’s so classic and violent yet way more special and thought out than the genre often hints to allowing. Mainly, you can thank it for birthing almost every film on this list.