Top 100: Bullitt (Peter Yates, 1968)
"You're living in a sewer, Frank. Day after day"
Ross is a witness who is about to testify against 'the organisation'. Lt. Frank Bullitt (Steve McQueen) and his team have to 'babysit' Ross for the 40 hours before the trial begins, but Ross is brutally murdered whilst hiding out in a squalid hotel room. Bullitt decides to cover up Ross' death whilst he goes out hunting for the men who killed him. On top of this, Ross was going to be the star witness in the trial intended to propel sleazoid political-type Walter Chalmers (a magnificently cold-hearted performance by Robert Vaughn) into a higher position of political power. Chalmers is on Bullitt's ASS.
Make no mistake about it, Bullitt is one suave film... one of the finest of its generation. The opening credits (by Pablo Ferro films) are some of the most beautiful in film history, though slightly reminiscent of the titles to Blow-up some two years earlier. And Lalo Schifrin's vibrant jazz soundtrack sweeps breezily throughout the film. The scene in the restaurant quite early on is a good example why… Schifrin's funky, jazzy number kicks off a splendid sequence which is devoid of any dialogue, just occasional looks and glances between Frank and his beautiful girlfriend Cathy (Jacqueline Bisset). Indeed, the track is entitled 'A Song For Cathy'.
The music, performances, San Franciscan setting, minimal dialogue, gritty realism, taut verité direction by Englishman Peter Yates, and award-winning editing all mesh perfectly in Bullitt.
Rather than being a glossy crash/bang/wallop cop thriller, Bullitt is very underplayed, aside, of course, from the classic car chase involving McQueen's growling green Ford Mustang (not to mention the re-re-re appearing green VW Beetle!) It's probably the pace of Bullitt, not to mention its gritty pursuit of realism, that'll put modern audiences off enjoying it. Bullitt is a taut cop thriller with intelligence, a 60s classic that frequently swings between effortless and self-conscious cool. What is "cool"?. Bullitt.
