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Spoiler Alert: The lead-up to the final scenes


I remember watching The French Connection with Gene Hackman many, many years ago and have always considered it a grossly over-rated movie. This one, I thought, was much better and more engaging.

However with about three minutes left in the film, I somehow got un-engaged... as in, 'lost'. Can someone help out?

Spoiler, Spoiler, Spoiler.......

After 'Le Fou', Madman? - Benoit Maginal - agrees to testify, there is a scene in which Bad Guy #2 returns to a jail cell and announces to Bad Guy #1, "It's no use, there's too much security around him."

Bad Guy #1 thinks, then announces, "We'll have to (do what they do) but they'll get/blame Tany."

Who was Bad Guy #1 that he could order that action taken? How did he know that Tany would be blamed?


Also... in nearly the final scene where President Jacques Mitterand is at a press conference announcing "Vive la France, Comment-vous diddley-spit?", was one of the characters to his left not one of the corrupt police officers?


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Hello.

In the jail, the guy, who is a higher up in Tany's crew, says he knows what they can do to avoid taking the fall, which is inevitable because the Corsican Cops (the dirty cops) will not protect them, and the guy who was nabbed cannot be hit because there is too much protection. So they know they'll rot. They put in play the only thing that can save them. That was, order a hit on Dujardin. He normally cannot make this call, but since everyone in the crew is locked up besides Tany and his #2, they agree to do this because it means they can (falsely) testify against Tany and say he ordered the hit against Michel, and give them any other info the cops want, giving them freedom and witness protection in Canada. And there will be no one to be protected from since the crew will be disbanded and Tany in prison for the murder of Michel, again, because he will have been betrayed by his crew in prison who will say he was responsible. Tany knows this is what's happened the exact moment when his #2 tells him Michel has been killed. The important thing here is, the middle man (the guy with his girlfriend) will also be let off the hook so neither the dirty cops nor the criminals will have to worry about him snitching. This protects the dirty cops' identity. So yes, there were actually two dirty cops present at the end who had a hand in the assassination of Michel. Both on the left and right. No justice.

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Thank you for the explanation, it makes the conclusion very clear. Disappointing, perhaps, for the futility of a decent man losing his life but....

"...plus que ca change, plus que c’est la meme chose".

Thanks again for your reply and clarification.

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But how could they have known (hypothetically) about the hit from inside a jail cell?

The arrest at the end didn't make sense to me, they had no evidence of Tany ordering the hit (there was none), and the blokes in jail had no way of knowing that a hit would go down.

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"But how did they know..."

They were the perpetrators of the hit. It was their plan, their only way of not being in prison forever.

"The arrest didn't make sense..."

You don't need evidence to make an arrest, only suspicion. Everyone else from the crew has just been locked up or killed. It's just Tany and his #2. To the cops, it's obvious that Tany orders a hit on Michel (even though he didn't, the guys in jail did, again good plan on their part that actually works) because he's pissed Michel just gutted his organization. The only evidence they'll get is when the people in jail falsely testify that Tany ordered a hit. They get off, to Canada were assuming as it's referred to many times throughout the movie for snitches.

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I know they ordered it, I was asking how they could testify about a hit that was ordered after they were incarcerated, seeing as they wouldn't know anything about it.

You can't charge someone based on suspicion.

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You can still talk to ppl from the outside world while in jail, whether it's lawyers, phone call, etc. seeing as how they were lying about Tany, they could have made up anything whilst testifying.

And I didn't say charge, just arrest. The charges come later.

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Excellent explanation sir. I didn't quite get that in the movie.

I like Armageddon. A lot.

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