BEFORE: If I wanted to be cute, I'd follow "Blue Steel" with "Red Heat", and then "Heat" - no, that doesn't work for me. I want to go back to some real classic cop films of the 60's and 70's, rockin' it old school with this one, starring tough-guy actor Steve McQueen. And no, I didn't misspell the title of the film - that's the character's name. You have to figure a guy named "Bullitt" is going to become a cop, right?
THE PLOT: An all guts, no glory San Francisco cop becomes determined to find the underworld kingpin that killed the witness in his protection.
AFTER: Now there's a plot that sounds like a mission in the "Grand Theft Auto" game. Protect the witness from the mob goons that are coming to kill him, then chase off after the thugs in a fast car, and run them off the road...
Before Playstation and Rockstar Games, before Mel Gibson and Bruce Willis portrayed cops that don't play by the rules, there was Steve McQueen (last seen in "The Thomas Crown Affair"). Picture the classic 1960's cop, wearing a turtleneck and a sports jacket, driving around San Francisco in a classic muscle car (like a Ford Mustang or a Dodge Charger), and that's "Bullitt". (Wow, I actually identified the 2 cars seen in the film correctly, and that's very rare for me...IMDB confirms they are a Mustang and a Charger...it turns out that the 2001 and 2008 Ford Mustangs were designed to pay homage to McQueen's 1968 "Bullitt Fastback", I must have read about that somewhere. I don't own a car, but if I did, I'd want a green 2008 Mustang.)
I'm assuming that films like this one inspired the wave of gritty crime TV dramas in the 1970's, like "Barretta" and "Starsky & Hutch" - they all owe a debt to Steve-O. In fact, there's a car chase in this film, up and down the streets of San Fran, that probably influenced every car chase scene in a decade's worth of films. The "language" of a movie car chase is established here (minus the fruit-stand and the giant pane of glass that gets inevitably shattered). Sure, the car chase has been around almost as long as movies, and the elements are like words that have been used many times, but words arranged in the proper order can form poetry. You should watch this film just for a beautiful, 10-minute sequence with no dialogue, no music, just one car chasing another - the cadence of the shifting gears, the squealing of the tires, and the rhythmic slamming of the suspensions as the cars bounce up and down the now-famous hilly streets. Throw in the clang of the cable cars, and it's like music.
The other piece of art here is Bullitt's back-up plan, after the initial plan to protect the witness doesn't go so well. He makes the body disappear, then acts like he's got the witness stashed somewhere safe, which gives him time to track down the killers and figure out who they're working for, and where the leak came from. See, THIS is how a cop should act when there's a killer on the loose - you keep your head, you set a trap, and wait for him to show up. You do NOT go to your parents' house for dinner...
And this is real, old-school police work, before DNA testing (at one point, a body is described as "burned beyond recognition" - wouldn't be the case today...), before computerized interstate databases, cell phones, or even fax machines. I don't know what that machine was that they used to transmit a photo of a suspect between Chicago and San Francisco, but it sure made a lot of noise.
Heck, back then you could smoke indoors, or even on a plane! And apparently there were no computerized check-ins or boarding passes, everything was checked by hand! And I guess they allowed guns on planes too (?) - now, what year was the metal detector invented? Or is that a plot-hole?
Between the ambulances and the climax on the airport runway, I found this very reminiscent of the "Grand Theft Auto" games, maybe just because I was playing one over the weekend. Then again, the games were inspired by sequences in "Scarface" and other movies, perhaps there's some "Bullitt" influence in there somewhere.
Also starring Robert Vaughn (last seen in "The Magnificent Seven"), Jacqueline Bisset (last seen in "Airport"), Norman Fell (last seen in "Airport '75"), with a cameo from Robert Duvall (last seen in "Colors") as a cab driver.
RATING: 6 out of 10 passports
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