Bullitt

With the possibly exception of Casablanca, I think this must be the film I've watched on TCM more than any other. I mean, I feel like I must catch it every time it airs, not intentionally, but I turn on my TV, and there it is. It's gotten where not only do I know how every scene unfolds in order, but I also almost feel like I could write down the action shot by shot without looking. And even so, I'm still not sure I understand the plot after all these viewings! The mobsters and informants are almost meaningless. They're just there to give Steve McQueen someone to chase and shoot.

The real conflict of the movie is between McQueen's Bulitt and Robert Vaughn's Chalmers (is Superintendent Chalmers, or "Super Nintendo Chalmers" as Ralph Wiggum once called him, named after this character?). The whole movie appears to be a set-up for the one moment McQueen can say BS to Vaughn when he suggests compromise is sometimes okay. Anyway, I love the '60s vibe. I love Jacqueline Bissette wearing only pajama tops and apparently sleeping nude. I love the view of the street from her breakfast nook (looks just like the view from the apartment Benjamin rents in The Graduate). I love the flute-led jazz combo at the restaurant (they're probably somebody real and famous, at least within jazz circles, but I've never learned who).

The late 1960s saw two classic, hard-boiled thrillers set in San Fransico; John Boorman's stylised 'Point Blank', and Peter Yates' 'Bullitt'. Calling your hero Bullitt might seem an unsubtle way to emphasise his macho qualities, but in fact Steve MacQueen plays him as a quiet man, not some wise-talking maverick: he does what he has to do, but takes no pleasure in his actions; and survives the roughness of his work not by becoming a monster, but simply by becoming a little less human. It's a believable portrait, and the film as a whole has a procedural feel: there are action scenes, but these are kept in their place in the overall design.

Today, the film is most famous for its celebrated car chase, which makes excellent use, as indeed does the movie as a whole, of the bay area locations, but is not actually shot that excitingly: the conclusion at the airport is more original, though it roots the film in the time when it was permissible to take a loaded gun onto a plane. But overall this is still a classy film, dry, exciting and bleak, and among the very best films of its day. William Friedkin's brilliant 'The French Connection', made a short while afterwards, would appear to owe it a debt.

Steve McQueen's career peaked in 1968 with "Bullitt" and "The Thomas Crown Affair," both ideal vehicles for his cool persona. Although superior to its recent remake, "Crown" has not aged gracefully, while "Bullitt" has held up fairly well.

Cool though he may be, Frank Bullitt is a totally committed detective, perhaps even more so than Gene Hackman's Popeye Doyle or Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry Callahan. Bullitt is a complete professional who never takes his eye off the objective, no matter how much interference he encounters from his superiors or from Robert Vaughan's scheming politician, Walter Chalmers. And Bullitt, unlike Doyle or Callahan, operates without the histrionics. No one-liners, no yelling and screaming tantrums from this officer. You may not like him very much, but you have to respect his dedication to duty and you'll quickly share his absolute contempt for Chalmers.

"Bullitt" is best remembered for its spectacular car chase in which McQueen reportedly did most of his own driving. But this is not primarily an action film. Aside from the chase and the final shootout at SFO, there's not a lot of violence. Most of the attention is on Bullitt's maneuvering to unravel the mystery and to keep Chalmers off his back.

Recommended if you like McQueen or policiers in general. The pace may be a little slow for people under 30 who are used to a more slam-bang, less cerebral approach to this sort of thing, but "Bullitt" is still worth your time. Just don't expect "Lethal Weapon."

The first lone-wolf cop story plays by the rules of the genre it spawned, featuring a charismatic, outsider type who carries a badge and an attitude directed just as much against the egos and hubris of his superiors as against the criminal element.

Frank Bullitt (Steve McQueen) is a detective lieutenant on the San Francisco police force who gets handed a "babysitting job" looking after a would-be Mob informant by ambitious politico Chalmers (Robert Vaughn). Things go wrong with an attempted hit that leaves the informant and his guard in intensive care and Bullitt on the wrong side of Chalmers, not to mention a pair of killer hoods who tool around in a Dodge Charger and have no respect either for stop signs or Mustangs.

"Bullitt" the movie is best-known for an automotive duel between the assassin duo and Bullitt, still championed by some as the greatest car chase in movie history. I think it's been lapped myself, though I admire the long sections of real-time churn-and-burn since it flies in the face of MTV-style fast cutting we know today. The hoods Bullitt chase look like insurance salesmen, but of course they were really stunt men, and with McQueen doing a good deal of his own stunt driving as well, there's a validity to the sequence that makes up for some slackness in the composition.

"Bullitt" is a better film for the things that occur around the car chase, not so much with the central mystery of Johnny Ross as with the scenes of Bullitt in his element, like making coffee, talking with his superiors, eating a sandwich. McQueen's acting was showcased better in films like "The Sand Pebbles," "The Cincinnati Kid," and even his final film "The Hunter," but his star power was never more in evidence than it was here, especially in the scenes he shares with Vaughn, who plays the role of a preppy hardass to perfection and gives both McQueen and the viewer a foil more evil than the real crooks in this picture.

Seeing Bullitt handle Chalmers' baiting is a real lesson in how less is more. There's a scene where a fingerprint check gives Bullitt the opportunity to let Chalmers have it, but instead of rounding on the jerk, he simply tells Chalmers the score as he makes for the door in one of the great underplayed lines ever filmed.

Verisimilitude is everything in "Bullitt," as director Peter Yates and screenwriters Alan Trustman and Harry Kleiner present it. Long scenes are shot in operating rooms, morgues, and hotel-room crime scenes as a way of presenting what we are seeing as real in a way no other film did then and few have done since. Every shot, as Yates explains on his DVD commentary, was shot on a real location, and you feel like he got it all down exactly right, getting the right mix of style and drab reality. A shot cop moans while blood pulses through his wound, while a strangled woman is seen in such gory detail we understand another character's need to throw up over it. Throughout there's Bullitt as only McQueen could play him, saying the right line the right way, jumping in an ambulance to fix a problem, telling his gorgeous girlfriend (Jacqueline Bisset) "It's not for you, baby" in a way that comes off utterly cool rather than gratingly sexist.

I couldn't figure out what was going on with the crooks – "the Organization" as they are dubbed since calling them the Mafia was seen as demeaning to a particular ethnic group not yet known for creating films like "The Godfather" or "GoodFellas" – not until I watched "Bullitt" a second time, at which point I realized that wasn't so important. "Bullitt" has an annoying subtext of police work as dehumanizing, something Bullitt understands implicitly makes him a tool for the wrong sort of people. That was the year that was 1968, Chicago and all that, but the au currant anti-establishment notes do rankle.

But McQueen was a cinematic great, one who doesn't get as much attention today but proves here why his image is so enduring. Yates credits the clothes McQueen wears, but Yates himself, along with his writers, Vaughn, Bissett, and a terrific supporting cast led by Simon Oakland as Bullitt's tough-but-fair captain, create one of the great platforms for a movie tough guy ever built, a platform McQueen fills very, very well.

What a change of pace this movie is as compared with its genre today. I'm no old fogey but would that modern directors become smart enough take several pages from its book.

The Bullit character is a precursor of Dirty Harry but a bit more cerebral. Stylistically, the director sets the stage beautifully for McQueen's Bullit. The movie has a European feel (director Peter Yates is a Brit) and achieves its dark mood through quiet understatement. The musical score for instance. Today, music is overly used, overly loud and manipulative. (i.e. in case you are not moved by this scene, here are a division of amplified violins to remind you to weep). In 'Bullit' the music is sparingly used and doesn't intrude at all. It complements the directorial style without setting the agenda.

The feeling of reserved naturalism is achieved through editing and dialogue. There really aren't very many lines in the movie and when characters do speak they are very succinct. Notice the last 15-20 minutes of the movie, most of which takes place at the airport. Hardly a line in it. There is none of the chattiness so prevalent today (especially post "Pulp Fiction") which is so tedious (unless the script is tip-top, which is rare).

Editing is, perhaps, its greatest strong point. The many long edits deserve equal credit with the dialogue in setting the low-key mood. The cinema verite dialogue of the airport scenes (and, say, the scene where McQueen and Don Gordon search the trunk) combined with the long cuts add greatly to understated feel while adding realism.

And the performances are top notch. The spare script helps McQueen shine since the taciturn moodiness fits his persona to a tee. There are very fine performances from all of the supporting cast, from Don Gordon to Bisset to Fell to Duvall to Oakland. This is a great movie for watching faces. Note the expressions of the hit men during the chase scene (just another example of this movie letting the little touches speak volumes).

The chase scene certainly deserves its billing as one of the best in movie history. Recently, 'The Transporter' was lauded for its opening chase sequence. The one in 'Bullit' is a marvel compared. In 'The Transporter' sequence I'm not sure there is a cut that lasts more than three seconds. In 'Bullit' it is again the editing which sets it apart here. The long edits give you the feel of acceleration and deceleration, of tire smoke and gears, of wind and the roller coaster San Francisco streets. You are given the time to place yourself in the frame. In short, 'Bullit' uses real craftsmanship. Films like 'The Transporter' use hundreds of quick edits to mimic the danger and immediacy of 'Bullit' but it comes across as hot air, confusion instead of clarity. The two scenes are perfect set pieces of easy (and hollow) Mtv-style flash versus real directorial substance.