Rating: Summary: How can you go wrong? Review: Steve McQueen, action, crime drama and 1968 San Francisco?
Rating: Summary: Bullitt Mustang Review: The movie Bullitt has the absolute best car chase ever filmed. I just purchased a 2001 Ford "Bullitt" Mustang, a limited edition car, only 6500 were made. Any Bullitt fan should have one!
Rating: Summary: Steve McQueen was never cooler Review: As a cop doing things "his way" he pre-dates Clint and Harry Callaghan. Clint may have some good zinging one liners, but McQueen is the eptiome of cool.In the famous ( and still the best ) car chase, he hardly seems concerned. His scenes with Robert Vaughn as the oily DA are great. There is no one comparable to McQueen even on the movie radar screen right now. Not even on the edge.
Rating: Summary: Bullitt- Not All It's Cracked Up To Be Review: For along time I heard that this movie was the definitive cool car chase/action movie. But when I saw it, I was gravely disappointed. The one big car chase was great, but that was about it. There were a lot of slow boring scenes. I'm not some bratty SoCal kid with an attention span of .00000001 seconds, but this was a real letdown. It got the 3 star by the skin of it's teeth. You want good 70's cop entertainment? Watch Dirty Harry movies, at least he's always involved in gritty, urban adventures with no waiting around.
Rating: Summary: McQueen - still the man! Review: This is the movie that prompted me to move to San Francisco. Being twenty and in college I couldn't afford a Mustang but I did wear a lot of turtle-necks. Now, thirty years later, the 60's pace seems a bit slow, though the chase scenes still get the adrenaline pumping. If you live in San Francisco it's especially fun to try to identify local streets. It didn't matter that the scenes were shot all over the place and pieced together. What was funny was seeing the same white Pontiac in a number of different scenes of the chase, or the same Austin -Healy parked in the same spot on different occasions in the story. But these are things - minor ones, at that - only a car nut or San Francisco resident would notice. The twist in the plot reminds me of old detective novels. Jacquline Bisset is stunningly beautiful and Rober Vaughn is the guy to hate. And Steve McQueen? He da man!
Rating: Summary: Classic Review: This is a classic action film in every sense. McQueen is at his best as tough guy cop Bullitt. The bad guys are great, too, though you sometimes aren't sure where Bullitt fits in. The movie is probably most-remembered for its infamous chase scene up and down the streets of San Francisco. They didn't make many movies like this and they certainly don't make them like this anymore. Highly recommended.
Rating: Summary: classic cop/car chase flick Review: If you want a movie with a great story line and one of the best car chase sequences ever filmed, then bullit is the one. Is a classic duel between the good guys vs the bad guys. The good guy driving the Ford Mustang, and the bad guys driving the Dodge Charger R/T. The movie is realistic except most people know that in real life the Charger would of left the Mustang in the dust.
Rating: Summary: Cool as the other side of the pillow Review: McQueen. In San Francisco. Black Turtleneck (under his shoulder holster, of course). It just does not get any cooler than this. The perfect vehicle (no pun intended) for McQueen, who was the coolest of his time. He is perfectly cast as the detective who has seen it all, is tired of the dishonesty, but still will not let anything keep him from doing his job. Between this film, The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape, the McQueen Legend was made. Check for a pulse in the guy who called this boring. The signature moment of the film is the chase scene, and it is the only one by which all others must be measured. Whether its Tom Cruise flying through the air space over the Persian Gulf, Gene Hackman chasing an elevated train in New York or Harrison Ford flying the Millennium Falcon, when compared to this one, they all come up short. Even watching this on the small screen, my stomach moves up and down as the Charger and Cobra GT fly up and down the hills of San Francisco. Even the music assists in the action (like when The Chase is starting, all we have is a the thump of a bass line, picking up in its intensity until it is drowned out by the squeal of the tires and the cars are off). Strong supporting roles by Don Gordon who is wonderfully understated as his partner and Jacqueline Bissett as his girlfriend (you KNOW anyone that cool would have to have a stunning beauty, of course). Add Robert Vaughn as the too-smooth for his own good politician trying to pull Bullitt's strings. Along with Dirty Harry and the French Connection, Bullitt is among the best cop movies ever.
Rating: Summary: Nostalgic favorite Review: I saw this movie Christmas Day 1969. At the time I lived in San Mateo and worked in San Francisco. Knowledge of the area helped me to appreciate the setting and being a McQueen fan also helped. I have seen this movie many times since that day, (up to the present), and am happy to say that all of the pieces finally fit for me. It took a couple of viewings to get the plot straight and many more to get details not readily apparent. I won't say much more except that at the time this film was made, the car chase blew everybody away and set the stage for subsequent and too often overblown copycat chases. The car chase was not the movie however, the story line with very human characters is what I liked most about this film. An example of this would be the Bullitt character being awakened by his detective partner who helps himself to orange juice which Bullitt mistakenly thinks is for him. The cabby, played by Robert Duvall, has a dog doll in the back window and doesn't make a pest of himself by chatting up his fare. Even the assassins are human in that they aren't supermen and make mistakes that they get frustrated trying to rectify. All in all, my favorite detective yarn. Extraordinary people made to look ordinary.
Rating: Summary: The Famous Chase and McQueen at his best ! Review: Steve McQueen became the American Anti-hero in Bullitt. He wore the part very well, becoming Frank Bullitt, a police detective who was interested in doing the best job he could with least amount of politics and brown-nosing. He could be trusted and he had been involved on several high profile cases which received media attention which resulted in the press and the public having a high opinion of him. But he's just a cop doing his job. He's seen a little too much, and has a developed a thick skin. The plot is a little difficult to follow because it's presented entirely from Bullitt's perspective. Therefore some of the major plot points are not emphasized and might slide by you un-noticed if you aren't playing Detective along with Bullitt. The film is also somewhat leisurely paced from what most audiences are used to seeing. It's the antithesis of a dumb action thriller--even though its a film famous for it's still hair-raising car chase which takes place mostly on the hilly streets of San Francisco. And another thrilling chase scene on an airport runway. In fact it was a film that was shot entirely on location and great attention has been taken to details. The hospital scenes were actually shot in a wing of a hospital and real doctors and nurses played the doctors and nurses in the scene -- not actors. Robert Vaughn magnificently plays the utterly untrustworthy and oily slick rich politician. He's used to having people say yes to him and do exactly what he wants, when he wants it. And he's also used to keeping his nose clean and being portrayed by the press as a squeaky clean, near perfect conservative politician. He's requested Bullitt to keep a valuable mob informant safe from harm over the weekend, so he can present the informant to the Senate to testify. Vaughn is playing a dark Bobby Kennedy on a quest to grab headlines and political power by exposing the mob. Bullitt accepts the assignment but notices right away that people have already been sloppy in choosing the room the informant is in, and other matters. It's not a particularly hard assignment, and Bullitt is not overly concerned about it. It's his job, no big deal. However, the mob informant is acting rather strangely, and while another office is on watch duty, two hitmen enter the hotel room and blow away the informant and shoot the police officer. The informant isn't quite dead yet and is rushed to the hospital. When the officer tells Bullitt the informant let the people who shot them into the room, Bullitt realizes something is very fishy about the set-up. Vaughn is of course furious and he will need a scape-goat to take the fall if his star witness can't testify. That scapegoat is going to be Bullitt. When the informant dies, Bullitt keeps his death a secret at first. He wants to get to the bottom of things, not because he's worried about Vaughn but because its his job and maybe somehow Vaughn was involved with it also. Robert Duvall pops up in the film as a taxi-driver. Jacqueline Bissett looks beautiful as Bullitt's devoted girlfriend, who is worried his job is making him too cold, too tough and too distant. Norman Fell is also quite good in a supporting role. There is beautifully realized scene back at the crime scene, where Bullitt is going over (in his mind) all of the information he has. He is re-playing what may have happened in the room, seeing if there is some piece of information or piece of information he's over-looked. There are several cuts in the scenes, showing us what Bullitt is looking at, how he is focusing intensely on solving this perplexing and high profile case. There is no music in the scene, and no dialogue. It's a brilliant scene and one only a handful of directors today would have the power to keep it in their film. Throughout Bullitt, you will notice how sound and particularly silence is used. There's a great late 60's jazzy score by Lalo Schifrin (who is best known for his Mission Impossible theme), but there's also the sound of silence which is used very effectively in the film, and the sounds of late 60's automobiles racing through the streets of San Francisco. Director Yates is a cameraman and editor himself, he knows how to make a sequence work to its fullest effect. In this film he used William A Fraker as his cinematographer who create a realistic yet smooth (as opposed to a rough documentary type)look for the film. The film was written by Alan R. Trustman. It was nominated for a Best Sound Oscar and won an Oscar for Best Editing. This is one of the best performances Steve McQueen ever gave. He gives the role the intensity and depth it warrants while still moving about as gracefully as a Panther. Bullitt and Junior Bonner remain my favorite McQueen performances. Chris Jarmick Author of The Glass Cocoon with Serena F. Holder - A steamy cyber thriller available January 2001. Please order it today. Thank You
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