Over the years, I somehow always missed out seeing Steve McQueen in "Bullitt ". After hearing all of you guys talking about how great it is, I watched it the other day, and was sorely disappointed. Did I miss something???

Car chase on the big screen

That 10 minutes was pretty cool, but didn't make up for the other 1 1/2 hours of dud.......

it didn't age well. for its era, it was excellent and cutting edge. most old movies are dull by todays standards.

McQueen has always bugged me. Overrated egomaniac.

When "Vanishing Point" came out, I thought it was a cool movie, but then I watched it again a few years ago........not as I remembered.

Nail on Head

Same way with Star Wars when I was a kid. Now you can see the strings that x planes are hanging from.

Try the rye, it's better than the bourbon.

McQ has more shooting, the Duke, and car chases with a badass green car.
It's a pretty terrible movie but I find it more enjoyable than Bullitt

That's probably part of it, but I like a lot of other movies from that period, especially ones with the "Duke" in them. I just thought this one was completely emotionless.

State of the art continues to grow....

Also, we get older and change. When I first saw Cool Hand Luke, I could identify with Luke. Last time I saw if he was a fuggin, trouble making punk who got what he had coming.

the dukes westerns are an exception for the most part. the scenery, sets and cast really hold up.

I still like it. I think it is a tightly scripted movie, and the lack of unrealistic action as we see in today's movies is a good thing, IMO.

Quien Sabe,


GWB

Unfortunately our society today has mass attention deficit disorder and requires an explosion, building collapse or computer generated monster every 90 seconds or so.

The actor who played the desert Hippie/biker (with the nude girlfriend) who helps out Kowalski with some 'stay-awake' pills and to slip past a police roadblock, was also "Pea Eye" in the original, Lonesome Dove.

it's just you. Bullitt was a great movie. lol

The car chase was good, probably one of the best especially for the period but I was born, some say hatched in San Francisco and the way it jumped from part of town to another and back kind of bugged the hell out of me, even when the movie first came out. I always did covet that Mustang though. Still do.
Paul B.

This is true. The biggest problem with Bullit, isn't the movie but the viewer. Today the viewer is expecting what the movie industry has subjected us to, and we have forgotten real movie sets and filming.

For instance, the last James Bond movie is so full of special effects, the whole story is lost in the movie and really doesn't mater. Special effects have replaced good writing and scripts...

Whew! Thought this might be a bourbon thread...

I was always curious if the car chase scene was filmed driving through the same neighborhoods over and over or if it was just an editing snafu because it looks like they pass by some of the same vehicles either parked or moving more than once.

Have to agree;
The chase scene was the best part of the movie, and, I like the chase scene in "gone in 60 seconds" WAY better...Plus it's a better movie!


Virgil B.

Good article about the chase scene:

http://selvedgeyard.com/2009/09/26/required-viewing-bullitt-the-granddaddy-of-car-chase-scenes/

And another:

http://classicmustang.com/bullitt_motor_trend.htm

IMO CGI is the best thing to happen to movies since sound as far as adding realism and imagining scenes that would be impossible without it. But that said, it doesn't make up for basic film making or especially basic story telling.

The judgement of any film or book is whether it is a good story well told. Way, way too many movies these days look like they spent their entire budget on tremendous CGI special effects and left about $110 to pay the writers. Bad dialog, bad directing and overall really bad story telling in a lot of them. If you start with a great story and tell it well then great special effects can really add to the overall movie going experience, but the effects are still just gravy, the story is and always will be the meat.


I like Casablana a lot because it's a good story well told even though the plane taking off at the very end is really fakey looking.

I agree with Jim - story trumps all.

Watching Ghost and the Darkness - GREAT story, limited CGI but still a good movie. Even tho I HATE the way Michael Douglas plays his character.

THIS!

I really think that is part of it. The average attention span lasts about as long as it takes to read a tweet. Carefully developing characters and building up a story takes time and I don't think the average movie goer wants to invest that time.

As far as movie making styles, they come and go. I'm not enamored of the angry 50's actors as I call them. Serious "adult" movie acting of that time consisted of really angry shouting actors, Rod Steiger or George C. Scott being some examples. Then in the 70's the "film it through gauze" look became popular.

Things like that can detract from a movie but if one can overlook those period fads the basic movies can still hold up. Now that I have Netflix and other streaming channels I like to watch a lot of old silent movies that I'd never seen before. Growing up all I ever saw on TV were the old slapstick comedies but there were a lot of serious movies made back then. The acting is necessarily melodramatic since they had to tell the story by their faces and body language with minimal written dialog, but the stories themselves are pretty good. And this was before the Hollywood code of 1934 so folks were allowed to get naked and have sex. There is a scene in one movie where everybody gets drunk, takes off their clothes and goes for a swim off of a yacht, and in another scene Barbara Stanwyck flips a definite middle finger bird at someone who'd made a snide remark to her. You wouldn't see a gesture like that in movies for another 50 years.

The relevance of Bullitt doesn't hold up quite as well as others. Shaft for instance.

Jim in Idaho- I will take a movie from the 30's or 40's over dang near anything since. I find CG as annoying as it is advanced. Still seems faked and most often a case of where less would be more. What was the stupid movie where John Cusack is flying a plane through an earthquake dodging falling building- just thinking it elicits far more groans than gasps.

Great case- King Kong, none can touch the original for suspense and excitement. The last one was plain stupid. Overdone ad nauseum. What believability is there is Jack Black running between the legs of brontosaurus herd in a narrow valley. Real suspense trumps action. It costs less but is harder to produce. Comparing the first Alien movie to the next proves that. Remember the scene in the Godfather where the cop walks to the door is silhouetted while e guy stealing the rug inside has his revolver poised at the ready. Betting many do. Can anyone remember any scene from say, Avatar? (If they bothered seeing it?)

Watch Miami Vice! Fast car, fast boat and gunfights. What more could you want?

Well maybe most but not all. I watched The Shootist last week and its still great.

I still like that one a lot, even if John Wayne did die in it.......

The green VW Beetle. I think you see it four times.

Another I'm pretty sure was the same vehicle they passed by at least twice is a VW 'bus'. Both times it was parked over on the right, bumper toward the street, along with some other parked vehicles.

There's a white Firebird that makes a couple appearances as well.

What I like about Bullett is they didn't appear to speed the film up in the car chase scenes. The stunt car drivers were realty getting after it.

Maybe someone who knows how to shave?

I think "Ronin" has the best chase scene of any movie, period, running thru Paris.

I watched "Bullitt" the other night, too. Good movie without the really silly stuff seen today.

I like the chase scene, but there aint no way that 289 Mustang hangs with that 440 Charger.



Clyde

Of course not, that is why McQueen drove a GT-390...

I stand corrected on the cubic inches, but still stand my the intent of my statement. Unless that is a 428 CJ, it aint hangin with the mopar.


Clyde

Check the stories I linked above.

The truth is that they originally shot the chase scene with McQueen driving a 1965 GTO, but he kept passing the Dodge. They then detuned the Dodge and gave McQueen a Mustang to make it look like a closer race...

I hear that original GTO resides somewhere in Montana these days...

Bullit Facts:
From articles and DVD extras I've seen

The Charger (440) was pretty stock compared to the 390 Mustang but it was still faster.

The Mustangs's engine sounds in the chase were actually recorded from a 289 powered GT40.

The script didn't make sense to Robert Vaughn at first.
But the more money they offered ,the more sense it made.

That is true. What few people don'[t know, is that there is no rear view mirror in that car, because what is behind you is not important. Check that tach and speedometer, it isn't easy driving and taking pictures at that speed...

Wow, that picture is a flashback.

And you are right about "what is behind you is not important" in a Goat. That's where the Super Sports always were.

Haha! That's pretty cool. Also cool to read in that article that the stock Charger could run circles around the Mustang. I was more of a Mopar guy as a kid, around the time that movie was made.

The article points out that the way they shot the chase had audience members "jumping out of the their seats". Too true! My best buddy and I saw it in the Grand Theatre in Calgary... we sat near the front and the realism of the chase was so powerful we were literally bouncing around in our seats in response to the film.

You just don't get that same visuo-spatial effect when you watch it on the small screen, or from too far away on the big screen.

Read the articles RufusG quoted in his post earlier.

It wasn't a 289, and the Charger still blew the doors off the (modified) Mustang. No surprises there... anybody who attended the drags in 1966-69 knew that the Mopars were the cars to beat.

IIRC that Mustang had about a 7 speed gear box as well, at least judging by the constant shifting...



I was stunned by the revelation that sometimes Hollywood "bends" the truth a bit in their movies for dramatic effect. I know, I know, it sounds implausible if not downright ridiculous but I swear it's true. For instance, I was 14 years old before finding out that a Colt SAA does not actually hold 87 rounds.

I always figured that the VW beetle was faster than the mustang.

It had to be to get in front of him on that same hill at least five different times.

Remember the fat detective named Cannon?
I saw him shoot the tires off an airplane trying to take off using a small Colt snub nose.

Who hasn't shot the tires off an airplane with a colt?

This is what happens when rank amateurs try to alter the mileage on a car to get a better sale price. Shrapnel clearly chucked his variable-speed electric drill to the speedo cable correctly, but failed to reverse the motor...

I remember reading an "interview" with Steve McQueen about Bullitt, in which he said the Mustang was REALLY fast.

If you enjoy cars, you'll enjoy this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtdtGgf1BF0

If I remember correctly, Clint wasn't holding a 29 all of the time, either.

What those old cowboys could do with a lever action and iron sights was amazing.

Now I know I hate you....

He was the one guy Raquel Welch would have boinked outside of marriage.

When asked if she would sleep with someone she wasn't married to she said, "no, of course not. Unless he was really sexy, like Steve McQueen".*







*her words, I have no opinion on the matter in that regard.