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Plot: Roy Scheider leds an special unit of the NYC police. They call themselves the seven-ups, because they always target to arrest criminals and send the to jail for seven years of more. Their methods are unorthodox, but not specially violent. At least not until they stumble into a band of kidnappers during a stakeout and one of them is killed.

Comments: With Roy Scheider in the lead and "French Connection" producer Philip D'Antoni at the helm, there's little doubt that everyone involved wanted another serving of the same stuff. Good thing is, it was great stuff to start with. Everything that made "French Connection" great is here, from the gritty, realistic approach to police work captured in pseudo-documentary style to the moral ambiguity of many of the characters involved. And yes, we also get a terrific car chase, even longer and more elaborate than the one William Friedkin staged before.

The problem is that this film does also incurrs in some of its predecessor's faults. The pace is a bit too slow for today's standards, and the plot, although intriguing enough (it involves no less than a gang that kidnaps mobsters for a ransom) is pretty much straightforward once the main characters are introduced.

Still, those in need of a fix of gritty 70s police drama should check this one out, it has been ignored for decades in favour of the "French Connection" films and is good enough to stand on its own. The plot is more interesting, Roy Scheider delivers a terrific performance, and the film has some priceless little bits to offer, such as the repeated scenes in which Scheider meets with an old school friend turned snitch.

7/10

I bought the DVD as soon as it was released and, even though it isn't a great movie, it has its moments - - including that top-notch car chase.

First saw this back in the 70's when I was in the Navy. Loved the car chase.

THE FRENCH CONNECTION . . . faults . . . slow by today's standards?  For me, THE FRENCH CONNECTION is one of the best movies of the 70s and one of the best police thrillers ever.  "Today's standards" are aimed at the MTV generation (i.e., viewers who can't pay attention for more than 20 seconds without a tricky camera move, quick edit, or explosion).  I consider THE FRENCH CONNECTION to be methodical and meticulous, but not slow . . . these qualities certainly are not faults.  It's a very interesting movie that celebrates the nearly lost arts of strong acting, crisp dialogue, and smart direction.  I prefer watching slow-paced, but somewhat realistic movies like THE FRENCH CONNECTION, SERPICO, and DOG DAY AFTERNOON to almost any of today's fast-paced, music video style movies.  Actually, try reading the book THE FRENCH CONNECTION.  Whatever minor action exists in the movie was created exclusively to make it more theatrical and exciting.  The actual investigation by Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso was much slower paced and had no car chases or shooting.  Just a lot of surveillance.

Burgo, I'm the first one to loathe the MTV stylisms that now rule action movies, but I found the pace of "French Connection" a tad too slow. Same with this one. I enojyed it better than "French Connection", but I think that at 1:45 it could have been told in 1:30 with ease. 

Both movies have redundancies that should have been ironed by a more careful editing. In this film, there are two very similar scenes where the bad guys use a car wash facility to do their heists. Both scenes are long, deliberate, and almost identical. Same with "French Connection". I barely remember the film, but I think the whole "let's break this car apart to find the drugs" thing took forever. 

I'm on the other side of the coin.  I think THE FRENCH CONNECTION is vastly superior to THE SEVEN-UPS.  THE FRENCH CONNECTION is in my top 10 movies of all time list.  I like THE SEVEN UPS, but it's definitely not in my top 10.  Not even in my top 100.  As for the tearing the car apart sequence, that was pretty much invented for the movie.  The book, which chronicals the real investigation, just says the drugs were hidden in the wheel wells or some place sort of obvious like that.  In any event, I think the scene in the movie works very well as a mechanism to show Popeye Doyle's obsession with the investigation.  He is convinced the drugs are in the car and will not allow the mechanics to stop tearing the car apart until they find the stash.  If they had shortened this sequence, Doyle's obsession and frustration would not have come across as nicely.