“I know that there are many people–and very intelligent people, too–who love this kind of fast-action movie, who say that this is what movies do best and that this is what they really want when they go to a movie. Probably many of them would agree with everything I’ve said but will still love the movie. Well, it’s not what I want, and the fact that Friedkin has done a sensational job of direction just makes that clearer. It’s not what I want not because it fails (it doesn’t fail) but because of what it is. It is, I think, what we once feared mass entertainment might become: jolts for jocks. There’s nothing in the movie that you enjoy thinking over afterward–nothing especially clever except the timing of the subway-door-and-umbrella sequence. Every other effect in the movie–even the climactic car-versus-runaway-elevated-train chase–is achieved by noise, speed, and brutality.”
Pauline Kael, “Urban Gothic” (a review of The French Connection), 1971