Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Bullitt - Steve McQueen is awesome, y/y?

Bullitt (1968, Yates)

I watched this right after The Magnificent Seven, but before that all I knew about Bullitt was that it made the cowboy cop, had a really famous car chase, and Steve McQueen was literally the coolest man ever to walk the earth.

I was not disappointed, and even a little surprised. Bullitt really does make the cowboy cop trope; Frank Bullitt ignores the pressure of a smug and slightly slimy politician, and goes out to investigate on his own to take down the mob. The film is most famous for its 100mph car chase, which hasn't aged well now that every other film has some giant exploding car chase (and it doesn't help that I'm a gigantic Top Gear fan). That said, it's still awesome.

The real surprising thing about Bullitt is that for a film that's said to have created the cowboy cop, it actually deconstructs it. I don't want to get into spoilers, but suffice to say that Bullitt doesn't entirely save the day, and at the end he's questioning every single decision he made in the film. Bullitt is more than Steve McQueen being awesome (which he completely is); the last act gives it some unexpected depth.

This isn't really a good post, so here's a picture of Steve McQueen to make up for it.


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