Bullitt

Caught this gem at the Innaloo Event Cinemas Hollywood Classics season. I think it was the first time to see it on the big screen but I might be mistaken. Bullitt really holds up as a tight, mean 'police vs mafia vs politicians' crime drama with one of the best car chases in cinema history and the best actor in cinema history. Steve McQueen moves through this film like a handsome, cool as fuck shark, slightly hungry but mostly just dealing with minnows and plankton and wherever else I can take this analogy.

Directed by Peter Yates in 1968, Bullitt follows the story of a botched protection assignment given to Lieutenant Frank Bullitt at the behest of slimy polly, Walter Chalmers, played by Robert Vaughn (his second of three films with McQueen). Set in San Francisco, it uses the street scenes to great effect, especially in the famous Mustang car chase. McQueen did most of his own driving in this and many other films, as he was a notorious rev-head and pretty adept at it too.

I reckon it was from around this time that McQueen really refined his prowess. In the late 50s and early 60s he had delivered performances that asked for levity or a kind of  reverence for the leads - Paul Newman in Somebody Up There Likes Me, Yul Brynner in The Magnificent Seven and even Jackie Gleason in Soldier in the Rain. But from the late 60s onwards he was his own force, not needing to tailor his style for anyone and it shows in how confident he is in this period. In Bullitt, there's a sense of lightness in his interactions with girlfriend Cathy, played by Jacqueline Bisset, but it's not frivolous or goofy, like he leaned towards earlier in his career. This was all well and good and McQueen's ability for comedy was generally overlooked, but the gravity of his acting grew from around The Sand Pebbles onwards. Disclaimer - I haven't seen The Reivers and this looks like a pretty nuttily dated film, so all this might be bollocks. But I've seen all of his work after that and though some of the films may be dull, his weightiness carries a lot of them.

So Bullitt is a must-see for those of you who have only seen The Great Escape and maybe The Towering Inferno on TV. If only to witness the best actor in history in his prime. It's a great 'what if' to wonder how McQueen's career might have progressed had he not died at the age of 50 in 1980. I like to imagine him growing gruff and grizzled and competing for roles with Newman, Redford, Eastwood, Hackman and even the 'younger' guys like Bruce Willis, Tommy Lee Jones and Harrison Ford. McQueen in Unforgiven or Die Hard may have been interesting...

See also: The ten best Steve McQueen films - 10 to 1:

10. Nevada Smith (1966)

9. The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

8. The Towering Inferno (1970)

7. Love with the Proper Stranger (1963)

6. The Cincinatti Kid (1965)

5. The Sand Pebbles (1966)

4. The Getaway (1972)

3. Bullitt (1968)

2. The Magnificent Seven (1960)

1. The Great Escape (1963)