Roy Scheider's Genre-Defining '70s Action Thriller Is The Perfect Prime Video Stream

Roy Scheider couldn't have known it at the time, but when Myron Greenberg allegedly landed a meaty punch that broke his nose during the 1946 Diamond Gloves Tournament in New Jersey, his newly rearranged face would make him the perfect everyman movie star. After compiling an 11-1 record as an amateur boxer, Scheider enrolled at Rutgers University to study acting, which led to his portrayal of Mercutio in "Romeo and Juliet" at the 1961 New York Shakespeare Festival. He kept busy on the stage and in television throughout the 1960s, but, thanks to that perfectly broken nose, eventually found major success in movies.

Before officially becoming a leading man, though, he made his mark in the early 1970s in supporting roles that generally took advantage of his tough guy charm. He was excellent as Frank Ligourin, the suave former pimp of Jane Fonda's Bree Daniels, in Alan J. Pakula's 1971 thriller "Klute." However, he truly broke through that same year as NYPD Detective Buddy "Cloudy" Russo in William Friedkin's groundbreaking crime action thriller "The French Connection," which is currently streaming on Prime Video.

After the 1968 release of Peter Yates' "Bullitt," cop flicks were increasingly leaning into electrifying action set pieces. "Bullitt" had seemingly set the benchmark for urban car chases, but Friedkin tore out the brakes and arguably topped Yates with a frantic, high-speed pursuit underneath an elevated subway train. This scene belongs to the great Gene Hackman as the dangerously driven Detective Popeye Doyle, but the overall film is a shared effort between Hackman and Scheider. Indeed, as the partners scramble to apprehend heroin smuggler Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey), Hackman's live-wire performance might've been too much to take without Scheider's far more reasonable Cloudy.

The dynamic between Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider's characters in "The French Connection" is less "good cop-bad cop" than "out-of-control cop-sane cop." Doyle is a racist who gets off on using his shield to bully regular folks into coughing up information. Now, Cloudy is no saint. He generally has Doyle's back. But he knows how and when to rein his partner in. He's also the adult in the room, particularly when he visits a hungover Doyle who's been handcuffed to his bed by a one-night-stand. Cloudy knows he can't change Doyle, but that doesn't mean he can't chide him for being reckless.

Scheider's performance earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, which bumped up his profile. He then landed his first official starring role in Philip D'Antoni's gritty crime film "The Seven-Ups" as an NYPD cop who gets caught up in a remarkably wild car chase (a sequence that some even place above their peers in "Bullitt" and "The French Connection"). Then, in 1975, Scheider more or less cast himself in "Jaws," becoming an iconic movie dad as Amity's Chief Brody in Steven Spielberg's blockbuster. Four years later, he gave his finest performance as self-destructive director Joe Gideon in Bob Fosse's semi-autobiographical "All That Jazz" (for which he earned an Oscar nod for Best Actor).

The 1980s were not terribly kind to Scheider, as men with fascinatingly imperfect visages fell out of favor with studios. No one's looking for a Roy Scheider type, but, then again, that mold got shattered when he passed away in 2008.