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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.

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