Dir. Peter Yates
Writ. Alan Trustman, Harry Kleiner
Act. Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn

One of the original Billy Badasses, Steve McQueen dominated most of the action movie kingdom for twenty years. His performance in Bullitt probably gave birth to the maverick cop who would break a few rules to get the bad guy, especially if it involves pissing off a politician. Bullitt won an Academy Award ® for Best Film Editing and nominated for Best Sound and for its time it was quite the good non-war action movie. However, the movie has a slow pace and is not up to the standards the current movie going audience, but then again the current audience has the attention span of a gnat.

Steve McQueen (The Towering Inferno) stars as Lt. Frank Bullitt, a no-nonsense San Francisco cop who is asked by Senator Chalmers, played by Robert Vaughn (Baseketball,) to put a witness into protective custody. When the witness is murdered and one of his fellow officers is wounded, Bullitt stops at nothing to figure out what happened and runs into more problems than he planned on. Bullitt is going to have to ignore the rules as well as Chalmers to solve the case.

Like I said in the opening, McQueen is one of the original tough guys. His presence on screen just draws you to him even if he is not the person speaking in the scene. One thing I like about McQueen is that he never loses his cool, even when he looks completely pissed off. It's too bad that he didn't make it into the 80's where the action movies got fun. McQueen was a chronic smoker and was diagnosed with lung cancer and died soon after. He was the original choice to play John Rambo in the movie First Blood, but had to turn it down because of the Cancer. That would have been interesting to see.

As far as the story goes, it is a typical action movie for the 1960's, lots of drama with brief spots of intense action, mostly chase sequences. There are two chases in this movie, one between two cars, and the second between people. The first chase was quite entertaining, not as good as The French Connection, but very passable as far as car chases go. The second chase was very endemic of the entire movie, slow at times but good to watch. The rest of the story was ok, based on a novel called Mute Witness by Robert Pike, I just have a hard time believing that the eye witness would be able to do what he did when he is wanted by both cops and the mob. But what do I know.

It's not the greatest action movie in the world but it is worth it to watch Steve McQueen at his best. As for the rest of the movie, it's more of a drama than action and if it was any other actor in the lead, this movie wouldn't be as good as it is.

Brian - the Naked Gun