Bullitt
This classic cop thriller starring Steve McQueen helped define the “cool cop” genre, along with the Dirty Harry movies and a few others such as the original “Shaft”.
It is amazing just how well this epic tale has aged, for watching it one is not really very aware of the decades that have passed other than by the dress and car styles apparent in the movie. Here the cop anti-hero character is well honed into being a dark, moody, but very personable loner who also happens to have one of the loveliest screen paramours ever in a very young and desirable Jacqueline Bisset. This was before her turn in “Summer of ’42″, and she was a literal unknown at the time. She certainly caught a few eyes with her turn here as the girlfreind caught in the middle of Bullitt’s violence.
Of course, for those us of struggling through our undergraduate school years at the time, the real star of the film was McQueen’s throaty high-performance British racing green Ford Cobra Mustang. In what many consider the finest car chase sequence ever filmed, McQueen relentlessly and recklessly pursues the super-charged Dodge Charger in a drive to the death (ah, back when cars really rattled the pavement with their sheer horsepower and all that testosterone rumbled down the street!).
Can we all say muscle car perfection? One recalls the terrific sounds of all those upshifts and downshifts as McQueen, who insisted on doing his own stunt-driving here, careened dangerously at high speeds through the streets of San Francisco in pursuit of the bad guys.
The film unrolls with a tight, interestingly written, and well-directed story, one that interweaves money, crime, politics, and suspense in a script that could as easily fall from today’s headlines as from those populating the newspapers of thirty years ago when “Bullitt” was filmed. Detective Frank Bullitt (McQueen) is assigned for the weekend to protect a witness for a local hearing by one of California’s senators (Robert Vaughn) the next Monday. When mob hit men fatefully interrupt such well-laid plans, the plot spins into overdrive, and a masterful cat and mouse game ensues. The supporting cast is terrific, and the hit men are well played with deadpan bad guy grimaces and suitable grunts and groans. These guys really seem both evil and professional. And yet the duel between McQueen and the hit men serves only to introduce us into the nuances and undercurrents in the plot, which Bullitt must somehow unravel to solve the crime and rescue himself from the aftermath.
