Bullitt Bullshit
I just watched the Steve McQueen actioner, Bullitt, for the first time and I have to tell you I was less than impressed. Can anyone explain to me why this movie has a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes? Maybe the fact that almost all movies (except for 2001 and Planet of the Apes) sucked in 1968 has contributed to its legendary status. I just know that watching it last night gave me a big case of “I wanna turn this crap off and finish reading The Dark Tower.”
I get the nostalgia thing. I do. I love Hammer horror films. They’re not good films therefore my love of them must be linked to some nostalgic itch that they scratch. Maybe it’s just Ingrid Pitt. Done. Note that I didn’t rave on and on about the artistic integrity or “fun” of Countess Dracula or one of it’s lesser counterparts in the Hammer pantheon of low budget horror films. That’s because I understand that these were not great movies. I may like them but my liking them doesn’t make them inherently great.
No, Bullitt is less than great. It’s mediocre and sloppy and fairly fucking boring. I’ve heard over and over how great this car chase is and how McQueen did his own driving. He did his own driving because there weren’t any impressive stunts or dangerous bits to be done. I’ve seen more stunt driving on a go-kart track. Hell, they pass the same green Volkswagen Beetle forty or fifty times in this chase. That has to tell you something. The shaky-cam didn’t help either. Hey, here’s a riddle for you. What do you get when you mix two 1960’s era poor-handling American cars, bad camera equipment, and old men mumbling? Give up? BULLITT!!!
There’s a reason why an image search of the title on Google almost exclusively shows pics of the two cars in the chase. The cool cars are about all the movie has going for it. People love those cars but I daresay they’d love them just as much if they weren’t wrapped inside this crappy movie. People love the General Lee. Enough said.
The basic plot of the movie is extremely simple. Too simple. I kept expecting the whole thing to be a setup by the mob to get Bullitt put away or something. Something personal would’ve certainly raised the stakes. In case you’ve no idea, I’ll give you the short version. A politician is bringing a mob witness in to testify and he gets McQueen…er, I mean Bullitt…to watch him so the witness doesn’t get shot, which he does. Bullit gets in trouble then gets himself out of it again, sort of.
That’s the problem. This movie is filled with sort-ofs. The politician is sort-of maybe on the take, or not. He’s also sort-of a bigot but maybe not. McQueen sort-of lives the bachelor life except for the fact that he lives with Jaqueline Bisset (He buys TV dinners but she always makes food for him in the movie!). The Norman Fell cop is sort of crooked but maybe not. I like ambiguity in movies from time to time but come on! This just starts to feel sloppy. This isn’t Chinatown after all. Draw a fucking conclusion so we’ll know who to root for! It’s like the writer and director had no idea what was going on behind these characters’ eyes and didn’t even care.
I also have to take a moment to rant about the hipster-doofus jazz score. Whew! I know that was cool back then so I tried to give it a break but when that’s practically all the music in the film it’s hard to get away from it. There is no traditional score which for an action-ish movie spells certain doom. The big runway chase at the end is musicless and, let’s face it, this isn’t exactly the speeder bike chase in Return of the Jedi. The visuals aren’t really enough to hold you in their grip. We have really long shots of a jet taxiing back to the terminal. Ooooooo. I’d put some dramatic music over that (while cutting about 90% of it as well).
That brings up the subject of length. Bullitt feels padded. It’s like they turned in their final cut and the studio brass said, “Not nearly long enough, guys! Longer, longer!” Shots linger on uninteresting moments so often that it must be a stylistic choice – one chosen to bore the crap out of the audience and wring every bit of suspense out of the proceedings.
Did I hate Bullitt? Well, hate’s a strong word but yes, I hated it. It was dumb and boring. I can take dumb and exciting or smart and boring but dumb and boring together do me in every time. I wonder what Sergio Leone would’ve done with this material.
