Steve McQueen: The Essence of Cool

Nothing like as good as the other documentary on the Bullitt Blu-ray disc, dealing with film editing but this is just about worth a look. From the title you would imagine this is a great celebration of a great charismatic and cool guy but that just isn't the way it turns out. All the usual suspects say all the usual things except for his first wife Neile Adams, who is great throughout and Dickie Attenborough who is sycophantic and boring throughout, what a terrible man hiding beneath such a gentle facade. Mr Cool himself, who insinuated himself into scenes that weren't intended for him and passed on dialogue he felt he couldn't deal with (while he was concentrating on looking cool and reflective!) seems to finally come apart during the filming of Le Mans. He's a big star, approaching 40 at the end of the sixties - he wants sex and drugs and that's the way he goes. The Getaway and Towering Inferno are late highpoint but it seems he makes so much money from Inferno that more bad than good comes from it. I shouldn't criticise the documentary for clarifying all this and so maybe just the title should be changed to Mr Cool boils over or some such. Worth a watch but a bit sad.