Bullitt
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Bullitt is a 1968 Warner Bros. action crime/mystery/thriller motion picture starring Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, and Jacqueline Bisset, with Don Gordon, Robert Duvall, Carl Reindel, Felice Orlandi, Vic Tayback, Pat Renella, Paul Genge, Bill Hickman, Norman Fell, and Brandy Carroll.
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.
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 movies. The scene had Bullitt in a dark "Highland Green" 1968 Ford Mustang GT-390, chasing two hit-men in a "Tuxedo Black" 1968 Dodge Charger R/T. (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 -- even mimicking the exhaust note).
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 filmakers to close down the bridge and film there.
Plot
An ambitious politician, Walter Chalmers (played by Vaughn), is holding a Senate subcommittee hearing in San Francisco on Organized Crime in America and has a key witness that 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 entire action of the movie takes place from Friday night (during the opening credits) to Sunday night on the weekend before the hearing.
Ross stole $2,000,000 dollars from his Mafia cronies and two attempts were made on his life before he left for San Francisco. Chalmers has the Police Department place Johnny Ross (played by Orlandi) in protective custody and requests that the unit headed by Detective Lieutenant Frank Bullitt (played by McQueen) be assigned to guard him.
Bullitt and his men, Detectives Delgetti (played by Gordon) and Stanton (played by Reindel), will take turns giving Ross around the clock protection at an undisclosed cheap hotel near an overhead freeway. 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, that Chalmers would not be there 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 Hickman), then burst into the room and Mike shoots Detective Stanton with a shotgun. He then turns and shoots Ross.
Stanton and Ross are both in 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. He is not interested in the injured policeman or the hit-men, only in the hearings that will launch his national political career, and wants to shut down Bullitt's investigation.
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. After Mike escapes, Ross dies in his hospital and Bullitt returns to discover this news. Bullitt suppresses the news and keeps the death secret, having the doctor misplace the chart and the body placed in the morgue as a John Doe.
Chalmers increases the pressure on Bullitt Sunday morning by serving his boss, Captain Bennett (played by 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.
The hit-men try to follow Bullitt to set him up for an ambush, but he evades them. The tables are turned on the criminals when he backtracks and comes up behind their car, surprising them. Phil then slams down the gas pedal and Bullitt gives chase, a flat-out race between two bellowing muscle cars through city streets. The chase comes to an end after Mike shoots at Bullitt's car with a 12 gauge shotgun and Phil loses control of the car. They crash into a gas station and both are killed in the fiery explosion.
But the spectacular car chase and action is not the engine that drives the movie to its culmination. 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. Cathy gets out of the car and wanders in on the crime scene, where she sees the murder victim.
She is upset as they leave. After a while, she gets out of the car. He comes to her. She has trouble accepting his job, and the true nature of police work. "You're living in a sewer, Frank!" she says.
Bullitt and Delgetti check the luggage of the victim, which has arrived at the police station. He finds out 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, Albert E. Renick. He also finds a lot of money.
He then tells Delgetti to call immigration in Chicago and have them send Ross's passport application while he gets a fingerprint check. When he gets a copy of the passport photo, Bullitt realizes Chalmers has been conned. The man who was murdered was not mobster Johnny Ross, he was actually Dorothy's husband, Albert Renick, a used car salesman from Chicago with no Mafia connections. The real Johnny Ross must have paid Renick to impersonate him, while letting Ross use his passport and identity to leave the country. Ross must have also set Renick up to get the heat off him, then killed his wife to shut her up.
Bullitt has to stop him before he can make his getaway on the flight to Rome as Albert Renick. He arrives at the airport just as the plane is about to take off, but phones the plane and the pilot returns 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 and foot across the runways as airliners take off around them, with Ross shooting at Bullitt. Inside the terminal, Bullitt finally corners Ross and fires two shots from his gun, the only time he uses it in the movie. With Ross dead, the case is finally closed.
The movie ends with Bullitt returning home to find Cathy asleep. He enters the bathroom and looks into the mirror, quietly contemplating.
Trivia
- The first mainstream theatrical film to feature the word "bullshit."
- The Jargon Dictionary references this movie in regard to crash and burn. [link]
- The famous chase sequence from Bullitt has been voted the best car chase in film history [link][link][link], in front of The French Connection (1971) and the original Gone in 60 Seconds (1974).
- Two 1968 Mustangs and two 1968 Dodge Chargers 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, and were left unmodified.
- Though it is widely believed that Steve McQueen, who was a great race car 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 rearview 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, Ekin is in the car.
- 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, Lt. Frank Bullitt upshifts 16 times without downshifting. A manual transmission in a 1968 Ford Mustang only has four forward gears.
- During the chase scene, the Charger loses six hubcaps and has different ones missing at different times.
- The production company was denied permission to film on the Golden Gate Bridge.
- This is the second of three films in which both Steve McQueen (Lt. Frank Bullitt) and Robert Vaughn (Walter Chalmers) appear. The other two are The Magnificent Seven and The Towering Inferno.
- The use of a fax machine at the time the film is set (1968) may seem an anachronism to modern viewers, but fax machines have been used to transmit photographs since 1924.
- Scenes from the film were used in a 1997 commercial for the Ford Puma with CGI used to have McQueen drive the car through the streets of San Francisco instead of the Mustang. At the end of the ad, McQueen parks the car in his garage, glances at the Triumph motorcycle he used from The Great Escape and gives the car a loving tap as he walks away.
- A model of the Vaillancourt Fountain can be seen on Cathy's desk.
- In the 2003 movie S.W.A.T, a Bullitt poster can be seen in Jim Street's (Colin Farrell) apartment
- During the car chase, a green Volkswagen Beetle appears several times, often travelling very slowly.
Quotes
- 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." - Chalmers: "Frank, we must all compromise."
Bullitt: "Bullshit." - Bullitt: "You sell whatever you want, but don't sell it here tonight."
- 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."
External links
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