Classic Movie Review: Bullitt
By Josh Spiegel
July 9, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
I could go on for a long time about how awesome this scene is. Going into Bullitt, I knew only so much: that McQueen played the original, perhaps, rogue cop, that the movie was set in San Francisco, and that there was a famous car chase. If anything, the fact that said chase still works today, 41 years after its initial release, is not only a testament to the gritty filmmaking espoused by director Peter Yates, but a condemnation of the fact that car chases are now seen by most filmmakers as an excuse for hundreds of jump-cuts and a dearth of coherency. The scene is, in many ways, the real climax of Bullitt, as the adrenaline that emanates from the movie seeps into your bones; even walking around my house was making me feel hopped up.
You can tell that I'm about to drop the other shoe, right? Yes, Bullitt has an amazing action scene. Yes, Steve McQueen is suave here. But that's about all there is. There's the iconic star, the iconic car, and not much else. The problem with Bullitt is that...it's too cool. Who'd have thought that an overabundance of coolness would be such a problem? During the time it was made and released, I imagine that Bullitt was not only groundbreaking for its action, but for its leading man. As Lieutenant Frank Bullitt (kudos, by the way, to the filmmakers for not making this name as inherently ridiculous as it ought to be), McQueen is almost uncaring as opposed to simply a bit too hip for the room. He walks around the movie as if he owns it, but would sell it if only someone would take it off his hands.
The whole movie treats things as if it's too cool to care. Sure, Bullitt does his job, as a San Francisco cop, but when push comes to shove, he'll fight back. To a point, he'll fight back. If you go into this movie considering that Bullitt is meant to be a cop who does things his own way, you might be surprised to notice that he never seems to raise his voice about anything, take severe action against anyone who's fighting against him; in short, he does none of the things that we have come to expect from the stereotypical lone wolf cop. Instead, Bullitt boils over silently, annoyed at the slimeball politico played by Robert Vaughn (who does the slimeball role well here and in countless other projects), not willing to get too rankled when things don't go his way. He's not happy, but...well, he's too cool to get angry.
What plot there is remains relatively simple. Bullitt is told by his superiors to keep a sharp eye on one Johnny Ross, the brother of an infamous mobster. Since the feds want to take in the mobster, and Johnny is willing to spill his guts about his brother's dirty doings, they want to make sure he's as safe as possible. This is where Bullitt comes in. The stakes get higher when a cop watching Johnny gets shot, but that rat politician doesn't seem to care much (which isn't very logical, as you might think said politician wouldn't curry much favor when spurning local law enforcement, but never mind). Bullitt ends up having to take on the mobsters gunning for Johnny by himself, as only a suave, cool guy can, and if a few bodies end up in his wake, who can you blame?
What troubles me most about Bullitt is the general sense of malaise that comes from the majority of the story. Sure, that car chase is all kinds of exciting, but the excitement doesn't come from some kind of suspense, some worry about whether Bullitt will make it out alive. Not only is the movie titled after the guy, but Bullitt never seems too frazzled behind the wheel of his car. Oddly, none of the participants in the car chase seem overexcited or stressed about being in a...you know, car chase. On the one hand, the whole sequence is awesome because you feel like a passenger. On the other hand, no one seems that worried about what's going on. If Bullitt doesn't worry about making it out alive, why should I care about him?
The lack of interest in the proceedings becomes a form of hypocrisy with the introduction of Bullitt's girlfriend, Cathy (Jacqueline Bisset, looking quite lovely in her few scenes). Cathy, you see, is a simple person, an innocent, who is just shocked when she finds out that her boyfriend is a policeman. No, wait, that's not what it is. It's that she's absolutely flabbergasted when she realizes what kind of things a policeman sees every day, such as murder victims. We are meant to think that Bullitt is a hardened cop, someone who's seen so much violence, so much bloodshed, that he has become inoculated against it, to the point of not caring. We are meant to think Cathy is unable to process this information. I wonder if Cathy met Bullitt a week before the movie begins, or if she was born yesterday.
Moreover, what's the point of having Bullitt be berated in some form on all sides? Sure, Cathy still goes to bed with Bullitt, she still loves him (I think), but to what point and purpose? I guess I've been overfed on stereotypically rogue cops, cops who are very outsized, flamboyant in their actions, to take a Steve McQueen portrayal seriously. McQueen sure was cool, he was a badass driver, but I don't think he cared too much about the acting end of being an actor. What's more, Peter Yates doesn't seem to mind if the script is dripping with one-note caricatures and bland plotlines. The most interesting thing outside of that car chase is Vaughn's performance. Though there have been and will continue to be slimeball politicians in movies, Vaughn is truly villainous in a movie that has no time for anyone to take such a hard-line position.
Nothing about this movie, aside from that car chase and the shocking amount of aloofness exuded by Bullitt and, by proxy, the filmmakers, struck me as daring or original. That, of course, isn't always a bad thing (plenty of those rogue-cop movies are pretty damn entertaining through and through), but when you're dealing with a movie that attempts (or tries to attempt) being a serious-minded look into the mind of a beleaguered cop, there has to be some interest from those behind the camera, those making the movie, to actually bring some reality into the story. Bullitt has many flaws, not least of which is the idea that we're meant to feel something for someone who's so ice-cold that all of his feelings would need to be thawed for a solid week before they'd ever appear as something familiar, something human. I can't fault Steve McQueen, because the lower-key he is, the more believable he is. He was never purely likable or even relatable, but his performance has a few hints of realism sneaking around the jaded exterior.
What is wrong with modern filmmakers, then, that what they take from Bullitt is not how to make proper action scenes, how to make them sing, but how to continue creating see-through characters. This movie is full of people who don't even have a full dimension to their roles. Yet, this is the kind of movie, the lone wolf police officer story, that we see way too much from Hollywood. If only movies hadn't gone the way of the jump-cut, maybe we'd look at the car chase from Bullitt, which I urge you to watch, as more than an anomaly in action films.