Hiding in plain sight behind the spectacular (and spectacularly real) car chase sequence everyone knows, is an exceptional police procedural that shouldn’t be taken for granted. Steve McQueen, in his absolute prime (nearly as cool as his Mustang GT.), is the tough, stubborn San Fran detective who lands in the soup when a hot witness under his protection takes a hit. Under pressure to clear up his mess over the weekend, the clues and obstacles follow fairly standard cop thriller tropes, but the execution from director Peter Yates, cinematographer William A. Fraker & editor Frank Keller update genre conventions by a generation, still looking fresh and inventive. Yates is particularly sharp throughout, loading an active frame with startling shards of info in subtle visual jolts, beautifully caught by Fraker on real locations in a style that’s closer to edgy European than overlit ‘60s Hollywood. (Compared to Don Siegel’s MADIGAN, a fine procedural from the same year that’s echt Universal Studios, BULLITT comes off as stylistically revelatory/revolutionary.*) Many scenes play with little or no dialogue, but there’s just enough for the outstanding supporting cast to make a mark. Not only Jacqueline Bisset and an amusingly smarmy Robert Vaughn (doing a Bobby Kennedy turn), but also standout early sightings of Robert Duvall & Georg Stanford Brown. More than the sum of its procedural parts, and more than its great car chase, BULLITT grabbed onto a new late ‘60s Zeitgeist.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *So too an opening credit sequence laying out the initial crime in snazzy high cinematic fashion. Worth revisiting right after you’ve finished watching.
DOUBLE-BILL: Robert Altman’s odd/uneven/comic BREWSTER MCCLOUD/’70 used Michael Murphy and a drawer-full of turtlenecks to send up the BULLITT mystique.
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