Review of Bullitt (1968) by Chris S — 28 Dec 2008

Let me get this out of the way: the famous car-chase scene is brilliant, and still holds up 40 years later. I can't think of a scene since which surpasses this ground-breaker.

That said, this movie is not good, suffering from enormous plot holes and poorly developed characters. To be kind, part of the problem is that Bullitt introduced the archetypical "rogue cop" which has been used and improved upon endlessly in most action movies since 1968. Still, McQueen's character isn't developed well at all, and it's really only suggested with a few sparse lines of dialogue that he's a rule-breaking lone-wolf. A mere three years later, Dirty Harry completely eclipsed Bullitt in the genre and took the archetype to a whole new level.

Beyond this, the movie suffers from a very weak premise, as well as a completely annoying (and, frankly, irrational) character played by Robert Vaughn. This, too, would become the archetypical foe of the archetypical rogue cop: the power-hungry politician. Unfortunately, the lack of character development in Bullitt leaves Vaughn's character without much motivation, rendering him nothing but an apparently insane public official.

I try to give ground-breaking movies their due and ignore the fact that followers did it better. Even with that leeway, Bullitt was a surprising disappointment.