Bullitt (2007, HD DVD)

I added Bullitt to my Netflix queue just so that I could see the famous car chase scene I'd heard so much about. I had to sit through over an hour of the movie before it happened, but it was pretty cool. I can appreciate how back in the late 1960's, a car chase was a real car chase and there was no CGI or any of that mess. While by today's standards it might not compare to something out of The Fast and the Furious, it is still a sight to see.

Bullitt is your basic cop drama about a Dirty Harry type who gets involved in a plot involving the mob and a dirty politician. The plot itself isn't all that original and the storyline is just a little bit hard to follow. I was expecting more of a shoot-em-up kind of movie but this was more of a thriller/mystery with one big action sequence the car chase. In short, Dirty Harry was better, but Steve McQueen was still so cool that Sheryl Crow wrote a song about him.

This movie won the Oscar for Best Editing, which I have to agree was pretty good for its time. It features a lot of cuts and multiple angles that you don't normally see in movies from that time period because the editing process was a lot more tedious than it is today. The slick editing helped to keep the pace of the movie going, otherwise this could have been very boring.

Steve McQueen was a cool guy, sure, but I thought he was a bit wooden in this movie. He was trying to play a tough cop, but he came off as a bit rude and emotionless. The gorgeous Jacqueline Bisset has a few minutes of screen time as Bullitt's girlfriend, but she is pretty much wasted. I noticed that almost every shot of her involved looking through something or there being some obstruction in the shot. I didn't understand why somebody would choose to cover her up like that. When her character is first introduced, the scene goes on for a couple of minutes before you actually see her face. Robert Vaughn is excellent as the dirty politician who tries to throw his weight around the force. Also keep an eye out for Robert Duvall in a small supporting role as a cab driver. Five years after this movie was made, he would be nominated for his role in The Godfather.

Bullitt is a pretty slow moving film and it runs just under two hours long. The characters go for several periods where there is no dialogue and the camera pans around a room. I know this takes some extra choreography to get the timing and placement of everyone just right, but it doesn't do anything for pacing. I honestly got a little bored while waiting for the big chase scene I heard so much about. Toward the end there is a little bit of a profane surprise, marking the first time the term "BS" was used in a film. It may seem like nothing now, but that was a big deal at the time.

If you love classic cop movies, then you need to see this famous movie. Bullitt, along with The French Connection and Dirty Harry, all rank as must-see films from yesteryear. Don't go in expecting a slam-bang action movie and you just might enjoy it, though I think The French Connection and Dirty Harry were much better.