I was half asleep watching this flick and I only got about 50% of the story. What exactly is happening here?
Steve McQueen is the coolest guy on the planet. That’s all you need to know. 
Wikipedia has a pretty good rundown of the storyline (scroll down to Plot).
I’ve got the DVD. The movie is pretty good, but on the whole it doesn’t warrant, IMHO, many repeat viewings. I’ve probably watched the car chase between the Mustang GT and the Charger 50 times, though – it truly is a gripping, thrilling benchmark of a movie car chase.
John Mace is right – McQueen is super-cool. Steve McQueen-cool, in fact.
I challenge anyone to fully comprehend Bullitt on the first viewing, especially the beginning. I have never seen a more incomprehensible plot since The Big Sleep. But Steve McQueen is so cool, the plot really doesn’t matter much.
[Snarky comment] Hollywood is remaking it with Owen Wilson in the Steve McQueen Role and they’ll use a Prius rather than a Mustang for the chase{/Snarky Comment]
Sorry couldn’t resist – and Hollywood probably won’t be able to either.
Steve McQueen is one bad man. That’s it.
On preview, I see that my comment has been raped and pillaged, but it doesn’t make it any less true.
Well, not all you ned to know. You also need to know that Jacqueline Bisset is the hottest gal on the planet.
Did you count how many times they passed that same Volkswagon bug? :eek:
Oh, it’s got its flaws, though that’s a great scene. Try being from San Francisco and watching it. “That’s Army in Bernal…wait, now he’s on Filbert heading towards Coit Tower…now he’s on Vallejo…now he’s in The Marina…now he’s in McLaren Park…whoa - is that Brisbane? That is one fast Mustang.” 
No, 'cause I was too engrossed counting the lost hubcaps, which I started doing the last time I caught it on TV.
I’ll have to catch it again because now I don’t remember whether it was two or three, and whether there was a continuity error in losing the same hubcap twice.
Bullitt is actually one of my all-time favorites for all the stuff that bookends the famous chase, although I can see how some may find much of the film dull. It’s actually the langorous nature of the story that I like best, however: among police precedurals of the period this one has a reasonable sense of reality about it, belying its roots as a big Hollywood vanity production, and the fact that it was directed by a Brit who was (IIRC) helming his first American film.
OK, well, maybe there aren’t too many police detectives who hang out in jazz clubs, bed gorgeous, Porsche-driving female architects, and who look so cool in a turtleneck and tweed jacket, but the rest of the film has an almost documentary feel about it that I really go for.
To expand a bit further, what really make the film for me are the subtle dialogue exchanges (such as between Bullitt and Chalmers at the hospital and between Chalmers and Bullitt’s boss at the church), the hilariously businesslike and utterly deadpan performances of pretty much every one of the main actors, and the strong sense of both place and time that runs through the whole film. Outside of maybe Vertigo, San Francisco has never been photographed so beautifully, and the film is very careful about establishing the correct time of day to show that every scene happens over the course of a single weekend. After the extended sequence at the hospital, McQueen really does looks like a guy who’s been up all night, and the famous chase is clearly set up as happening on a Sunday morning so that the streets are plausibly clear of traffic. Lastly, the opening credits sequence, with its stylish camera moves and way jazzy theme, gives me shivers every time I see it.
Oh yeah, and Chuck Norris wears Steve McQueen pajamas.
OK, I’ll stop rambling now.
Bullitt is also one of my favorite movies, but the one thing I always crackup about is during the chase scene, Bullitt is double clutchin’ like a mo-fo, and I always wondered how he could do that with a car having an automatic transmission. :eek:
I haven’t seen to movie and I’m not much of a car buff, but HUH?
You could get a 1968 Mustang with a manual transmission. . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Mustang
And, what’s the double-clutching you saw? Did you hear it from exterior shots of the car, or do they show him in the car actually double-clutching?
Trunk, when they show interior shots of the car, it’s got an auto; exterior shots during the chase scene the soundtrack has him double clutching through turns and coming out of straight aways.
Oh, I gotcha.
More a bit of trivia than an outright spoiler, but check this biography page at IMDB for Bill Hickman.
I was showing a friend one of my all-time favourite movies last week: Ronin. He lives in Versailles and works in Paris. He found it hilarious how the first chase scene jumps around the greater Paris area seemingly at random.
I love Ronin.
Another great one is Play Misty For Me. Clint is explaining to Donna Mills what’s going on with this crazy chick as they walk along the beach. They’re in Carmel, then they’re in Julia Pfeiffer State Park in Big Sur, then they’re on Monastery Beach, then they’re in Point Lobos…all while having the same unbroken conversation. I like to imagine them stopping mid-sentence, driving to the next beach in silence, then completing the same sentence, rinse, repeat.
(Later they stand naked kissing in the water of Big Sur river while Roberta Flack plays, and all I can think is “They’re both going to get Hypothermia. How romantic.”)
Yeah, well, here’s the burning question:
It is generally accepted that the Mustang in question had a hot 390 in it. But one quote I remember, from McQ hisself, was “It was a 289. But it was hot.”
Yes, McQ could have been wrong, but does anyone have better info on the car’s engine? For that matter, does anyone know where the car wound up?
Oh. Sorry, thie movie star int his movie was supposed to be Steve McQueen, right?
Lovvvvveeee those 1967 'Stangs! Damn, just drooled on the keyboard.
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