I knew exactly two things about the movie Bullitt before watching the movie: it had a car chase around the hilly streets of San Francisco, and it starred Steve McQueen. McQueen is one of those guys who gives off effortless cool, the man’s man who turned down Close Encounters of the Third Kind because he said he couldn’t cry on camera and who got an anachronistic motorcycle chase put into The Great Escape. I’ve always liked his work, and I’d never seen Bullitt beyond clips of that Mustang chasing another car over hills that really challenged both cars’ shock absorbers.
But I am generally curious about Steve McQueen and can’t say I’ve ever seen a movie of his I didn’t like. Regardless, here we are.
McQueen stars as San Francisco police detective Lt. Frank Bullitt. He and his team are assigned by the politically ambitious Walter Chalmers (Robert Vaughn) to protect a mob witness until the man can testify before a Senate subcommittee. The witness is at a cheap motel, and during the watch, one of Bullitt’s team is shot in the leg and the witness killed. Bullitt takes it personally and vows to find the killer himself before the weekend is out, cutting corners not so much to keep his superiors out but to make sure Chalmers doesn’t interfere too much. And, every so often, he goes to see his girlfriend Cathy (Jacqueline Bisset).
As plots go, Bullitt is pretty straightforward, enough so that it reminded me of other similar lone wolf-type police detectives in film. He could very well be Dirty Harry Callaghan or John McClaine. The biggest difference here is Bullitt preceded those characters by a number of years, and while Bullitt may be willing to buck or bend the rules, he does so not out of some sense of just being difficult, but more so because it will get him his results, and while the Chalmers of the world won’t like that, it doesn’t mean others won’t as what we do see of Bullitt’s superior is a man who largely does what he can to look the other way because ultimately, the results are more important than if one rich guy scores some political points. Bullitt isn’t some sort of scalding bonfire of rage or frustration over how the system works. He’s a guy who manipulates the system with the tacit approval of many around him because he actually does catch killers that way.
That helps a great deal as things shake out. The memorable car chase, one where the director even takes time for small character moments (Bullitt will stop to check on a motorcyclist who had a spill during the chase briefly before driving off again), is as good as its reputation. We don’t see Bullitt rage at his superiors or sneer. He mostly just gives them a “are you kidding me?” sort of look before he moves on, keeping his thoughts to himself. If Dirty Harry will tell off a boss figure for being ineffective, that isn’t the problem for Bullitt since he doesn’t seem to have that problem. He’s more likely to get hassled by someone outside the department.
Besides, this is Steve McQueen, an actor known more for his quiet, 1960s and 70s style of masculinity than anything else. Bullitt is the guy who has an attractive woman on his arm and in his bed, who can shoot the bad guy in a blatantly justified killing, and can get Robert Duvall’s cabbie to take him around to where the hitman went before the shooting went down. There’s a quiet, world-weary confidence to Bullitt, where he finds various people he has to deal with more annoying fools than anything else. But that’s a Steve McQueen movie for ya.
Grade: B
0 Comments