Bullitt is a 1968 thriller film
starring Steve McQueen. It was distributed by Warner
Bros.
The director was Peter Yates. The story was
adapted for the screen by Alan Trustman and Harry Kleiner,
based on the novel titled Mute Witness (1963) by Robert L. Fish (aka Robert L. Pike). Lalo Schifrin wrote the original music score, a memorable mix of jazz, brass
and percussion.
The movie won the Academy Award for Best Film Editing (Frank P. Keller) and was nominated for
Best Sound. Writers Trustman and Kleiner won a 1969 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best
Motion Picture Screenplay.
Bullitt is most-remembered for its central car chase scene through the streets of
downtown San Francisco, one of the earliest and most influential car chase
sequences in movie history.[1] The scene had Bullitt in a
dark "Highland Green" 1968 Ford Mustang G.T.390 Fastback,
chasing two hit-men in a "Tuxedo Black" 1968 Dodge Charger R/T 440 Magnum. (In honor of the Mustang in the film, the Ford Motor Company produced a limited edition 2001 Ford Mustang
GT "Bullitt Mustang," which took styling cues from the '68 movie car and even mimicked its exhaust note).
Comparisons
The movie is also considered highly influential in many other ways within its genre. The use of a rebellious and
borderline-insubordinate police officer as a protagonist operating despite interference from higher-ups was followed in many
later movies, notably Dirty Harry and The French Connection, both released in 1971. The
idea of making the officer fairly young and cool, and equipped with a sports car, was
subsequently used by Starsky and Hutch and Miami Vice.
The movie as a whole, including the car chase, makes extensive use of the San
Francisco Bay Area. However, San Francisco's most famous landmark, the Golden Gate Bridge, was not a part of the chase
scene because the city's film commission refused to allow the filmmakers to close the bridge and film there.
Plot
An ambitious California politician, Senator Walter Chalmers (played by Vaughn), is holding a Senate subcommittee hearing in
San Francisco on Organized Crime in America and
has a key witness who he hopes will further his political aspirations as he brings down a powerful Mafia syndicate. The witness scheduled to testify, Johnny Ross, worked with his brother, Chicago mobster Pete Ross (played by Tayback). The story takes place the weekend before the
hearing, from Friday night (during the opening credits) to Sunday night.
Ross stole $2,000,000 from his Mafia cronies and two attempts were made on his life before he left for San Francisco. Chalmers
has the San Francisco Police Department place Johnny Ross (played by
Orlandi) in protective custody for the weekend and requests that the detective unit headed by Lieutenant Frank Bullitt (played by
McQueen) be assigned to guard him.
Bullitt and his men, Sergeant Delgetti (played by Gordon) and Inspector Stanton (played by Reindel), give Ross
around-the-clock protection at a cheap hotel near an overhead freeway during separate shifts. Before Ross enters the hotel, he
makes several phone calls. Saturday night, while Stanton is guarding him, the desk clerk calls and says Chalmers and a friend are
there and want to come to the room. Stanton calls Bullitt at home, and is told not to let them in; Bullitt surmises that Chalmers
would not show up at one in the morning. In the meantime, Ross walks over to the door and unlocks it. A pair of hit-men, Mike
(played by Genge) and Phil (played by legendary stunt driver Bill Hickman), then burst into
the room and Mike shoots Detective Stanton in the leg with a shotgun blast. He then turns and shoots Ross, hitting him in the
chest and face.
Stanton and Ross are both rushed to the hospital. Bullitt wants to get to the bottom of the case and catch who shot them, as
well as the Mafia boss who ordered the hit. Chalmers is angered and blames Bullitt, threatening to ruin his career if Ross dies.
Furthermore, Chalmers does not care about Bullitt's injured partner or the identities of the hitmen; he is only interested in the
hearings that will launch his national political career. Chalmers attempts to shift the blame away from himself and make a patsy
out of Bullitt and the San Francisco Police Department.
Stanton survives his wounds, and Ross comes out of surgery with a "fifty-fifty" chance at survival. The gunman, Mike, then
appears at the hospital to finish Ross off, but is discovered and is chased by Bullitt through stairwells and the physical
therapy rooms. After Mike escapes, Bullitt returns to discover Ross has died from his wounds. Bullitt suppresses news of the
death, has Doctor Willard (played by Georg Stanford Brown) misplace the chart and
has the body placed in the morgue under a John Doe
identity.
Scene of the legendary car chase in Bullitt.
Chalmers increases the pressure on Bullitt Sunday morning by serving his boss, Captain Bennett (Simon Oakland), with a writ of habeas corpus to produce the witness
as Bennett arrives at church with his family. Bullitt reconstructs Ross's movements with the cabbie (played by Robert Duvall) who brought him into the city, and investigates the phone calls made by Ross. He finds that
one was to a hotel in San Mateo, to a woman registered under the name Dorothy
Simmons. With the hearing the next day, Bullitt suspects that this dead mobster may not be who he seems. The scene is set for the
legendary and exciting high-speed car chase through San Francisco.
Riding in a Dodge Charger, the hit-men try to
tail Bullitt in his Ford Mustang, but he evades them. As they search for him, he appears
behind their car, having turned the tables and now following them. At first the hit-men pretend not to notice, driving slowly
around the city in a tense scene. While waiting in traffic at an intersection an opportunity to escape presents itself. The music
eerily stops; Phil (Hickman), the Charger driver, takes a moment to secure his seatbelt, and with a roar from the Charger's
440 ci engine, he careens through the intersection, around a corner and away from Bullitt. Smoke billowing from its rear
tires, the Charger hurtles uphill and Bullitt likewise powers around the corner, giving chase through the hilly streets of San
Francisco and the outlying highways. Mike pulls out a 12-gauge pump action shotgun and fires a
few rounds at Bullitt. Bullitt tries to force the Charger off the road, the vehicles banging door against door, but to no avail.
At one point Bullitt spins out after avoiding a motorcyclist coming from the opposite direction and the hit-men are apparently in
the clear, but moments later he reappears behind them. The chase comes to a climactic end after Mike once again shoots at
Bullitt's car with the shotgun. Bullitt once again tries to force the car off the road. This time Phil loses control of the car.
They careen off the highway and crash into a gas station. Both are killed in the fiery explosion.
Back at the police station, Bullitt begins to check out Dorothy Simmons, the woman Johnny Ross called in San Mateo. He needs a
car, but one is not available at the station. His architect girlfriend, Cathy (played by Bisset), drives him to the suburban
motel, where he discovers the woman has been murdered via strangulation. After seeing a marked patrol car arrive at the motel
with its siren blaring, Cathy gets out of the car and follows the officers into the crime scene, where she sees the murder
victim. She is upset almost tramatized at the sight of the strangled eyes still open woman. Bullitt sees her and they leave. The
two pull over to the side of a busy freeway and talk about Frank's cool attitude about the homicide investigation. She has
trouble accepting his job, the true nature of police work, and Bullitt's apparent numbness to the horrors he sees on the job.
"You're living in a sewer, Frank!" she says.
Bullitt and Delgetti check the luggage of the victim, which has arrived at the police evidence office. The two rifle through
the luggage and find that all the clothing and toiletries are new and unused. Connecting the various bits of information, they
learn that her true identity was Dorothy Renick (played by Carroll), and that she was scheduled on a flight from San Francisco International Airport to Rome,
Italy, with her husband, who's only identity is his monogrammed shirts, bearing "AR". Further
investigation quickly reveals the mystery name to be "Albert E. Renick". Bullitt then tells Delgetti to call immigration in
Chicago and have them send over Renicks's passport application on what looks like one of the first facsimile machines, complete with an acoustic coupler modem, while he requests a fingerprint check. At this point, Chalmers arrives at the police station and demands
Bullit sign an official statement acknowledging that Ross died while in his custody. Bullitt ignores Chalmer's request until he
receives a copy of the passport photos, the entire group waiting patiently while the fax machine slowly and very loudly prints.
When it completes they examine the print, complete with sharp image of the suspect, whereupon both Bullitt and Chalmers realize
that they have been conned. The man who was murdered was not Johnny Ross, but Dorothy's husband, Albert Renick, a used car
salesman from Chicago with no Mafia connections. The real Johnny Ross paid Renick to impersonate him, while letting Ross use his
passport and identity to leave the country. Ross also set Renick up to get the heat off him, then killed his wife to shut her
up.
Bullitt has to stop Ross before he can make his getaway on the flight to Rome as Albert Renick. Having arrived at the airport
with Delgetti, Chalmers encounters Bullitt and makes him an offer that will help both their careers, but Bullitt tells Chalmers
he wants no part of it. He arrives at the airport just as the plane (a Boeing 707) is about
to take off and phones air traffic control, who contacts the plane and gets the pilot to return to the terminal. Bullitt enters
the plane as the passengers are coming off and sees the real Johnny Ross (played by Renella). Ross jumps from the back door of
the plane. Bullitt pursues Ross on foot across the runways as airliners take off around them. On two occasions Ross takes a few
shots at Bullitt who does not return fire. Ross runs back to the terminal with Bullit in pursuit. Bullitt narrowly avoids being
crushed by a plane. Inside the terminal, Ross tries to blend into the crowd but Bullitt spots him. When Delgetti arrives near the
scene with an armed airport security guard, Bullitt finally corners Ross at a glass doorway leading to curbside taxi pickup; Ross
kills another security guard (not the one with Delgetti) in order to escape, but is blocked by the locked electronic eye
automatic doors at both ends of the vestibule. Realizing he is trapped, he turns on Bullitt,
who shoots him (the first and only time Bullitt returned fire in the whole movie).
The movie ends with Bullitt returning home to find Cathy asleep. He enters the bathroom to wash his hands and looks into the
mirror, quietly contemplating his future as a detective — perhaps over the fact that he killed a man, no matter how justified he
was.
Car chase
McQueen spinning out his tires in Bullitt's car chase scene.
The famous chase sequence from Bullitt was voted the best car chase in film history in a poll of 5,500 British film
buffs.[1][2][3] The
rest of the top five were #2) Gone in 60 Seconds (1974), #3) The French Connection
(1971), #4) Ronin (1998), and #5) The Italian Job (1969).
Two 1968 390 GT V8 Ford Mustangs (325 bhp) and two 1968 V8 Dodge Chargers (375 bhp) were used for the chase
scene. Both Mustangs were owned by Ford Motor Company and were part of a promotional loan agreement with Warner Bros. The
Mustangs' engines, brakes and suspensions were highly modified for the chase by veteran car racer Max Balchowsky. The Dodge
Chargers were bought outright from Glendale Dodge in Glendale, California. The
engines in both Chargers were left largely unmodified, but the suspensions were upgraded to cope with the demands of the stunt
work.
Though it is widely believed that Steve McQueen — an accomplished driver — did the bulk of the driving stunt work, the stunt
coordinator, Carey Loftin, had famed stuntman and
motorcycle racer Bud Ekins do most of the risky stunts in the Mustang (Ekins also doubled for
McQueen in one sequence of The Great Escape, in which McQueen's character jumps over a barbed wire
fence on a motorcycle). The Mustang’s interior rear view mirror goes up and down depending on who is driving. When the mirror is
up (visible) McQueen is behind the wheel, and when it is down (not visible) Ekins is in the car. The black Dodge Charger was
driven by Bill Hickman, who also played one of the hit-men and helped with the choreography
of the chase scene.
The director called for speeds of about 75 to 80 mph (120 to 130 km/h), but the cars (including the ones containing the
cameras) reached speeds of over 110 mph (175 km/h) on surface streets. Filming of the chase scene took three weeks, resulting in
9 minutes and 42 seconds of film. During the chase scene, the Charger loses six hubcaps and has different ones missing at
different times. The Charger also crashes into the camera in one scene and the damaged front fender is noticeable in later
scenes. The production company was denied permission to film on the Golden Gate
Bridge.
During the chase sequence, the speeding cars pass the same green VW bug four different times.
Quotations
- Pete Ross: (on phone) "This is Pete. We lost him."
Phone voice: "He's your brother, Ross. If you can't find him, we have people who can. And you're paying for the contract."
- Frank Bullitt: "You believe what you want. You work your side of the street and I'll work mine."
- Walter Chalmers: "Come on, now. Don't be naive, Lieutenant. We both know how careers are made. Integrity is something you
sell the public."
Bullitt: "You sell whatever you want, but don't sell it here tonight."
- Chalmers: "Frank, we must all compromise."
Bullitt: "Bullshit. Get the hell out of here, now."
- Captain Bennett: "He let the killers in himself? Why would he do a thing like that?"
Bullitt: "I'm waiting to ask him."
Bennett: "What about the setup? What do you make of that?"
Bullitt: "Shotgun and a backup man, professionals."
- Chalmers: "I do not choose to have people accuse me of false promises for the sake of cheap sensationalism, or to be
compromised by your lieutenant."
- Chalmers: "Who's Renick?"
Bullitt: "He was the man who was shot at the Hotel Daniels. You sent us to guard the wrong man, Mr. Chalmers."
References
- ^ "Greatest Ever Screen Chases", Granada Television for Sky Broadcasting,
2005
External links
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