Bullitt

    Bullitt
    1968

    Synopsis

    Senator Walter Chalmers is aiming to take down mob boss Pete Ross with the help of testimony from the criminal's hothead brother Johnny, who is in protective custody in San Francisco under the watch of police lieutenant Frank Bullitt. When a pair of mob hitmen enter the scene, Bullitt follows their trail through a maze of complications and double-crosses. This thriller includes one of the most famous car chases ever filmed.

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    Cast

    • Steve McQueenLt. Frank Bullitt
    • Robert VaughnWalter Chalmers
    • Jacqueline BissetCathy
    • Don GordonLt. Delgetti
    • Robert DuvallCabbie Weissberg
    • Simon OaklandCaptain Sam Bennett
    • Norman FellCaptain Baker
    • Georg Stanford BrownDr. Willard
    • Justin TarrEddy
    • Carl ReindelDetective Stanton

    Recommendations

    • 100

      Chicago Sun-Times

      McQueen is great in Bullitt, and the movie is great, because director Peter Yates understands the McQueen image and works within it. He winds up with about the best action movie of recent years.
    • 100

      The Guardian

      Blessed with the fresh eyes of newly landed Englishman Yates (and genius cameraman William Fraker), the movie makes San Francisco fresh and alive, but also completely remakes and modernises the bleak, sleazy gangster demimonde in which Bullitt does his hunting.
    • 100

      The Hollywood Reporter

      It is simply one of the most exciting and intelligent action films in years, probably the best good-cop film we can expect to encounter.
    • 100

      Variety

      Conflict between police sleuthing and political expediency is the essence of Bullitt, an extremely well-made crime melodrama [from Robert L. Pike's novel Mute Witness] filmed in Frisco. Steve McQueen delivers a very strong performance as a detective seeking a man whom Robert Vaughn, ambitious politico, would exploit for selfish motives. Good scripting and excellent direction by Peter Yates maintain deliberately low-key but mounting suspense.
    • 100

      TV Guide Magazine

      Expert chase film, breathless and modern, that sent McQueen to the top of the box office heap. Bullitt is a return to the old, tough crime movies so expertly played by Bogart and Robinson, but made modern here by great technical advances and McQueen's taciturn, antihero stance. Yates's superb direction presents a fluid, always moving camera. All the performers are top-notch.
    • 90

      The New York Times

      A terrific movie, just right for Steve McQueen—fast, well acted, written the way people talk.
    • 80

      Time Out London

      The plot, concerning the battle of wits between an honest cop and an ambitious politician for possession of the key witness in a Mafia exposé, is serviceable but nothing special. But the action sequences are brilliant, done without trickery in real locations (including a great car chase which spawned a thousand imitations) to lend an extraordinary sense of immediacy to the shenanigans and gunfights.
    • 70

      Los Angeles Times

      Not to go all Pauline Kael on you, but Bullitt -- the 1968 crime drama starring a Ford Mustang GT390 and some guy named Steve McQueen -- is a fairly tedious bit of Aquarian cinema: the chicka-chicka-waah soundtrack, the inscrutable plot, the anaerobic dullness of every second that McQueen is off-camera. Bullitt scrabbles to its minor footnote status in film history on two counts. The first: It marks the only time any man ever looked cool in a cardigan -- McQueen should have gotten the academy's knitwear award. The second is the movie's remarkable seven-minute chase scene, with real cars (the Mustang and a black Dodge Charger), real drivers and real stunts, no special effects.

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