New York's Finest Trivia Quiz

Answer: The French Connection

"The French Connection", winner of Best Picture for 1971, stars Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider as two police detectives, Popeye Doyle and Cloudy Russo, who don't play well with most other cops. Popeye is impulsive and has a checkered past--a previous assignment left one of his fellow cops dead, a fact not lost on the rest of the department. Directed by William Friedkin, "The French Connection" is a gritty cat-and-mouse police drama for most of its runtime, telling the story with lean camerawork and a fast-moving plot that centers on intercepting a big heroin deal from France.

However, two scenes stand out: first, the car chase. When Friedkin asked Howard Hawks what he thought of Friedkin's movies, the fellow director replied that the films were lousy, and the only solution would be to "Make a good chase. Make one better than anyone's done." So he did. Popeye chases a henchman onto an elevated train, and when he can't get on, he pursues the train underneath in a car. The thrilling scene has many near-misses and ends when the runaway train crashes into another stopped locomotive. Amazingly, the scene was shot in real-time in real NYC traffic, without proper permits. Some off-duty cops helped control the traffic flow, but the motorists on camera were unaware that a film was being shot, and some of Popeye's almost-accidents were completely unstaged, a testament to Friedkin's devotion to realism. It's now considered one of the greatest chase scenes ever filmed.

With that in mind, the final scene of the movie isn't quite as thrilling, but it is more emotionally jarring. The detectives manage to corner the villain in an abandoned warehouse, and try to fish him out. When Popeye sees a movement around a corner, he fires at it--and too late, learns that he has accidentally killed another police officer in friendly fire. Determined to get his man, Popeye ignores the murder and strolls through the warehouse off-screen, at which point we hear a single gunshot ring out, and the camera fades. It's left unclear if Popeye nabbed the right man, if he got shot in the line of duty, or if he committed suicide.

Answer: The Avengers

Marvel's "The Avengers" set box-office records upon release in 2012, peaking at the third-highest grossing film of all time (adjusted for inflation) and setting a record for opening-day ticket sales in North America. For good reason--legions of comic book fans were eager to see the ensemble superhero movie starring previous film heroes Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and Hulk, plus supporting cast members playing Loki, Hawkeye, and Black Widow. But the film's legion of support owes as much to the comic scenes as to the action, including this memorable exchange near the film's end, quoted from the script:

Captain America: You need men in these buildings. There are people inside and they're going to be running right into the line of fire. You take them to the basements, or through the subway. You keep them off the streets. I need a perimeter as far back as 39th.
Police Sergeant: Why the hell should I take orders from you?
[the Chitauri attack. Cap blocks a blast with his shield, bats one Chitauri away with it, then blocks a point blank assault, punches another in the face, he grabs one of their weapons and then punches the Chitauri, flinging it across the street]
Police Sergeant: I need men in those buildings. Lead the people down and away from the streets. We're going to set up a perimeter all the way down 39th Street.

The NYPD, for all its strengths, is largely unable to handle an onslaught of aliens, plus a gigantic leviathan, unleashed upon New York City by Loki. However, the best line of the film is uttered by Stan Lee himself. The creator of many of the best Marvel superheroes, Lee cameos in all of the films set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In "The Avengers", he plays a man interviewed on TV after the bloodbath is over. Asked about the attack, Lee responds, "Superheroes in New York? Give me a break!" And comic book devotees everywhere swoon.

Answer: The Godfather

Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 masterpiece "The Godfather" doesn't supply a particularly positive image of the New York Police Department, which is probably a given, considering the protagonist is the heir to the Corleones, a New York Mob family. But even Mario Puzo's source material scorns Captain McCluskey, who goes into service for the villainous Sollozzo to pay for the funeral of his sister-in-law.

McCluskey becomes the bodyguard for Sollozzo, a drug lord in service of the Tattaglia family (a rival of the Corleones). Sollozzo, who notoriously forces Corleone bodyguard Luca Brasi to sleep with the fishes, makes several efforts to assassinate Vito Corleone--first, by shooting him in the street, and second, by an attempted assassination in the hospital. But Michael, Vito's son and reluctant-at-first gangster, foils the plot--earning him a well-deserved punch in the face from McCluskey.

Then, we get the most transformative scene in a film all about transformations: Michael's turn to the Dark Side. The ex-Marine, who had confided to his girlfriend at the start of the film that murder is "my family, Kay, it's not me", sets up an elaborate plan to kill McCluskey and Sollozzo. Michael arranges a dinner with his two enemies, then recovers a planted gun from the restaurant's bathroom and shoots them both, thus beginning his transformation into the new godfather of the family.

Answer: Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

"Home Alone 2: Lost in New York" fails to replicate the magical charm of Macaulay Culkin's first turn as Kevin McAllister, probably because director Chris Columbus neglected the fact that the best part of the first film was watching Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern (playing Harry and Merv, the Wet Bandits) get impaled, bludgeoned, and burned by an obnoxious pre-teen. Nevertheless, the second film has its moments, especially when Kevin booby-traps his uncle's townhouse, and the criminals (rechristened as the Sticky Bandits) get impaled, bludgeoned, and burned by an obnoxious pre-teen. The sequel's sentimentality may have put off some audiences--Kevin befriends a mysterious homeless woman who tends pigeons in Central Park, which luckily works out when she throws birdseed at the Sticky Bandits, who are then mobbed by pigeons* and arrested by the NYPD.

If anything, the best part of "Home Alone 2" was its way of convincing young adolescents that they too could survive winter in New York City armed only with a credit card**, after the world's most negligent family accidentally leaves for Miami on a different flight.

*Not actually recommended as a method to apprehend criminals
**Not actually recommended to leave 10-year-old kids alone in NYC with only a credit card

Answer: Taxi Driver

Martin Scorsese has directed several great films starring the NYPD, such as "Mean Streets", "The Wolf of Wall Street", and "Gangs of New York", and in most cases, the police step in at the end to handle a morally-bankrupt protagonist. "Taxi Driver" is no different. Travis Bickle (played by Robert De Niro), having first convinced himself that the mirror really was Talking to Him and suited up in film's worst-ever mohawk, illegally buys a gun and plans to shoot presidential candidate Charles Palantine at a rally, ostensibly because he has unrequited love for a volunteer in Palantine's campaign.

When Bickle gets accosted by some Secret Service agents, he flees the political rally and decides instead to take out his rage on a brothel that employs Iris, a young prostitute that Travis intends to "save". A bloody scene ensues, with the completely delusional Bickle causing most of the violence. Bloody and dying, Travis caves in to his delusions, and in a famous scene, holds a bloody forefinger to his temple and mimes shooting himself with a pistol. But the police do not acquiesce; instead, he is brought to the hospital, allowed to recuperate, and is celebrated as a hero.

During filming of "Taxi Driver", Robert De Niro actually acquired a real taxi license in NYC and drove around the city 15 hours a day in his time off.

Answer: West Side Story

New York cops are treated as a bunch of bumbling buffoons in the 1961 film "West Side Story", adapted from the 1957 musical, and directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins--who also choreographed the original Broadway play based on Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet". Again, the prevailing attitude toward the police is unsurprising for a film that takes the vantage point of two feuding street gangs. But the ham-fisted attempts of the police--first, in the Prologue, to ill-advisedly stop a bunch of finger-snapping, dancing gangsters, and then later, not acting to prevent violence between the Sharks and Jets.

Two songs in "West Side Story" directly reference the incompetence of the police. In the first, "Gee, Officer Krupke", the Jets lampoon a plainclothes officer who accuses them of cooking up gang violence at a heated dance. In the song, they indict most authority figures: cops, social workers, judges, and psychiatrists, none of whom can relate to young men who "aren't antisocial... only anti-work" since "we ain't no delinquents, we're misunderstood. Deep down inside us there is good." Notably absent is Jets member and main protagonist Tony, who is busy crooning for Maria, who is connected to the Sharks.

The second song, much less amusing, happens after the rumble, when Tony sort-of-accidentally stabs Maria's brother Bernardo. In "Cool", a sensible member of the Jets implores the rest of the gang to stay level-headed in the aftermath of the fight to prevent police retaliation. It doesn't work, at all, sadly. Tony, guilt-ridden, plans to elope with Maria, but just like Romeo, a message gets distorted, and a final confrontation between the gangs leaves him dead. The police enter again at the very wrong moment, too late to stop the tragedy.

Answer: Serpico

Another film about an unlikable NYC detective investigating illicit heroin, "Serpico" is based on the real-life adventures of Frank Serpico, who uncovered corruption in the NYPD in the '60s and '70s. Serpico's actions eventually led to the formation of the Knapp Commission in 1970 to investigate cases of graft in the department.

In the film, Serpico, though competent and moral, doesn't fit in with the rest of the department due to his liberal attitudes about policing and his moral authority over the rest of the department, which culminates in him being shot in the face during a raid on a heroin lab and being left for dead by his fellow officers. The film ends with Serpico's recovery and immediate removal to Switzerland.

Critics of "Serpico" slammed it for one glaring omission: the role played by Frank Serpico's partner David Durk in the whistleblowing job. Interestingly, a film based on the partnership between Serpico and Durk was originally planned by Sam Peckinpah, to star Robert Redford and Paul Newman, after the wild success of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". But it never happened. Redford and Newman wound up co-starring in a different film that year, "The Sting"--where they take down a corrupt boss and his paid-off police chief.

Answer: Do the Right Thing

Often considered one of Spike Lee's greatest achievements, "Do the Right Thing" speaks volumes about tensions between African-Americans and a police force burdened by racism, more than a dozen years before the founding of Black Lives Matter.

The film takes place on a single day, the hottest day in the year, at Sal's Pizzeria in Brooklyn, which is owned by an old Italian man but mainly serves the minority community, especially African-Americans. A racially-charged disagreement over which pictures should be hung on the "Wall of Fame" in the restaurant turns violent, and climaxes when the police, called in to resolve the conflict, choke Radio Raheem, nicknamed for the fact that he's always carrying around a boombox. At that point, the protagonist (played by Spike Lee) hurls a trash can into the pizzeria, starting a ferocious riot that quickly gets out of hand.

The film's deepest irony is in its title, "Do the Right Thing"--as though it were so easy. Lee deliberately waffles on the question of how best to secure racial equality, ending the film with diametrically opposing quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. The police are not represented positively in this film, but Lee also inculpates the restless mob, who, in one scene, attempt to vandalize a supermarket until finding out that the owner is Korean. In perhaps the film's best-known scene, which is an obvious homage to "The Night of the Hunter", Raheem explains why he has the words "Love" and "Hate" emblazoned on his knuckles:

"Let me tell you the story of Right Hand, Left Hand. It's a tale of good and evil. Hate: it was with this hand that Cain iced his brother. Love: these five fingers, they go straight to the soul of man. The right hand: the hand of love. The story of life is this: static. One hand is always fighting the other hand, and the left hand is kicking much ass. I mean, it looks like the right hand, Love, is finished. But hold on, stop the presses, the right hand is coming back. Yeah, he got the left hand on the ropes, now, that's right. Ooh, it's a devastating right and Hate is hurt, he's down. Left-Hand Hate KOed by Love."

Answer: Leon: The Professional

"Leon: The Professional" is set in Little Italy in New York City (and not actually Italy, as I embarrassingly thought when seeing it) and for yet another movie about gangsters, it doesn't come down too hard on the NYPD. The title hitman more-or-less-unwillingly adopts Matilda, a precocious girl whose entire family is assassinated by corrupt DEA agents after her father tries to keep part of the stash. Matilda swears vengeance on Stansfield, the psychotic leader of the DEA group, played brilliantly by Gary Oldman, and demands that Leon teach her how to be a "cleaner" (as he calls it) in exchange for carrying out services like knowing how to read and write.

After a failed hit on Stansfield, Matilda is abducted in revenge by an Emergency Service Unit of the NYPD, who are apparently being bribed very handsomely by the DEA. Luckily, Leon trades her for another hostage cop, then blows himself up to kill Stansfield.

Though the police don't really have a huge role in "Leon", they do serve an amusing anecdote from filming. One scene in the movie required a huge line of police cars and officers, played by actors. A real-life thief committed a robbery, and running away from the scene of the crime, ran smack into the movie set. Encountering a huge number of "cops", the thief voluntarily gave himself up to the authorities. So, while the police in "Leon" don't do a lot of good in the movie itself, they did foil one crime in real life!

Answer: Die Hard

After most of this quiz looks at films with a negative (comical or otherwise) view of the NYPD, let's remember the greatest film depiction of New York's finest there ever was: John McClane, star of the "Die Hard" franchise. Though the film actually takes place in Los Angeles*, where McClane has gone to visit his separated wife, the New York cop played by Bruce Willis is on his A-game as he confronts a terrorist plot in the Nakatomi Plaza, where his wife is being held hostage at a Christmas party. The cat-and-mouse game played out between McClane (under the pseudonym Roy Rogers) and German terrorist Hans Gruber is done to perfection. Many critics agree that the original "Die Hard" is one of the greatest action movies ever, and it rocketed Willis into stardom.

The sequels... well... they're not actually that bad. The second and fourth entries got solid critical reviews. The third entry in the franchise, "Die Hard with a Vengeance", is actually set in New York City and has Willis team up with Samuel L. Jackson to solve a series of riddles to prevent bombs from going off across the city. It's not great. 2013's "A Good Day to Die Hard" probably killed off the franchise for good, though.

*By contrast, the LAPD is represented as being full of incompetent bureaucrats, namely Paul Gleason, the principal from "The Breakfast Club", and Sgt. Al Powell, who is astoundingly knowledgeable about Twinkies. Not that I'm judging.