Bullitt (1968) - film review

What starts out as a routine assignment for San Francisco police lieutenant Frank Bullitt soon turns into something far deadlier.  His job is to protect Johnny Ross, a key witness in a trial that will smash a crime syndicate run by his brother, the mobster Pete Ross.   The man who stands to gain most from the witness’s testimony is Walter Chalmers, a ruthless career politician with underworld connections.  Johnny Ross is taken to an anonymous hotel but his police protection proves ineffective and he is shot by hitmen.  When Ross later dies from his injuries, Bullitt conceals the fact from Chalmers, who does all he can to have the lieutenant taken off the case.  Undeterred, Bullitt sets out to find Ross’s killers, knowing that he is up against a very wily and dangerous adversary...

One of the best-known American police thrillers of the 1960s, Bullitt helped redefine and reinvigorate the genre at a time when it was looking distinctly passé.  Actor Steve McQueen had been impressed by the pace and modernity of Peter Yates’s Robbery (1967) and insisted that the young English director be hired to direct Bullitt.  With its gritty realism, use of real locations, and maverick cop, the film provided a template for the plethora of police dramas and thrillers that would blaze across cinema and television screens throughout the 1970s.  The French Connection, Dirty Harry, Starsky and Hutch and many more of that ilk all have their origins in this iconic film.

Bullitt is of course best remembered for its hair-raising car chase in which McQueen’s character pursues a hired killer up and down the streets of San Francisco, a sequence that offers the thrill and excitement you would only expect to get from a dozen fairground rides in quick succession.  Innovative camerawork (achieved partly with a handheld camera) draws the spectator well and truly into the action, making this one of the most riveting car chases ever filmed.   Although McQueen liked to perform his own stunts, several of the riskier stunts in this film were handed over to professional stuntman Bud Ekins, who had doubled for McQueen on The Great Escape (1963).

In one of the high points of his devastatingly short but brilliant career, Steve McQueen is well-cast in a role – the taciturn lone cop - which suits his acting style and persona to a tee.  The law enforcer he portrays is a cold instrument of justice – incorruptible, tenacious, almost dehumanised by his job.  With an automaton-like single-mindedness, Lieutenant Bullitt is motivated not by notions of morality or self-interest, but by reasons that are unfathomable to us.  A modern anti-hero, he does what he has to do because of what he is, the gangster’s nemesis.   McQueen plays the part to perfection and would rarely be this convincing and enigmatic in any subsequent role.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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