We watched
Bullitt over the weekend. To my mind, the most enjoyable part of this movie is the way it allows the viewer to vicariously experience the cold, competent certainty of Steve McQueen. He lives in a universe where everything goes wrong, all the time--and yet he never appears to experience self-doubt. Despite chaos and pressures on all sides--including intimidating higher-ups like the District Attorney--nothing ruffles this guy. He is equally unmoved by flattery, bribes, threats, and criticism. He just coldly does his job, performing the next right action, seemingly needing no emotional support or validation from anyone. By the end of the movie, he has been completely vindicated, and gratifyingly proven to have had the right instincts about everything all along.
Nowhere is this cold, effortless potency more unrealistically dramatized than in his relationship with his girlfriend, played by Jacqueline Bisset. They enjoy a mostly nonverbal sexy relationship...except for one scene which occurs after Jacqueline has accidentally witnessed a tableau of gruesome brutality. This causes her to question where the relationship is going and "whether she really knows him at all" and other girly conundrums which, in a normal relationship on Planet Earth, would mean that the man is now be going to be subjected to hours and hours of feminine blather lasting long into the evening and possibly well into the next day.
However, in the Steve McQueen universe, when his girlfriend asks him, "What will happen to us...
in time?"--words that would strike fear into the heart of any other man--he non-answers with a sentence that sounds like a Zen koan:
"Time starts now." He gazes intensely into her eyes, and that's that. This bullshit answer seemingly completely satisfies her, and they can now sink back into blissful shared silence. To me, this is both the most unrealistic and also the most gratifying scene in the entire movie.
"Bullitt is a
1968 American
thriller film starring
Steve McQueen,
Jacqueline Bisset, and
Robert Vaughn. It was
directed by
Peter Yates and distributed by
Warner Bros. 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 mix of
jazz,
brass and
percussion.
"The film 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 probably best-remembered for its
car chase scene through the streets of
San Francisco, regarded as one of the most influential car chase sequences in movie history.
[1] The scene had Bullitt in a dark "Highland Green"
1968 Ford Mustang 390 CID Fastback, chasing two
hit-men in a "Tuxedo Black" 1968
Dodge Charger R/T 440 Magnum.
"In 2007, Bullitt was selected for preservation in the United States
National Film Registry by the
Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." "
From the Associated Press: 
I never knew we had such a weird state motto! As far as I can tell, it translates roughly to, "Okay, laters." Which actually somehow seems very appropriate for Washington, if not particularly inspiring:
"We’ve seen mocktails, Baracktails, and now: “shocktails.” Haru’s director of operations and mixologist, Keith Dusko, is pairing a new drink, the Electric Eel, with so-called Sechuan buttons (also called Sansho buttons) that he says create an “electric sensation” when chewed — “like putting a nine-volt battery in your mouth.” (Indeed, accounts of eating the flower bud support this.) The drink itself is a margarita-like mix of premium tequila, sake, and yuzu, but it’s the buttons we’re intrigued by. We’re sure Dusko isn’t the first to use them in a drink, but so far they haven’t gotten miracle fruit-like hype."
We watched Bullitt over the weekend. To my mind, the most enjoyable part of this movie is the way it allows the viewer to vicariously experience the cold, competent certainty of Steve McQueen. He lives in a universe where everything goes wrong, all the time--and yet he never appears to experience self-doubt. Despite chaos and pressures on all sides--including intimidating higher-ups like the District Attorney--nothing ruffles this guy. He is equally unmoved by flattery, bribes, threats, and criticism. He just coldly does his job, performing the next right action, seemingly needing no emotional support or validation from anyone. By the end of the movie, he has been completely vindicated, and gratifyingly proven to have had the right instincts about everything all along.