Bullitt

I watched Bullitt today. It's the original cop action movie with Steve McQueen as the plays-by-his-own-rules police detective who gives the finger to the chain-of-command to get the job down. The movie is most noted for its car chase through the streets of San Francisco. When I was in high school, I wanted a '68 Mustang Fastback so badly, but not because I'd seen Bullitt. I wanted that car because seeing them ripping around the streets of Minot, North Dakota, I knew it was bad-ass. I even like the new version Ford put out. I've thought about trading one of my kids in for one but have yet to go through with it. Stupid ethics.

Aside from the engaging, original car chase, I found the movie to be ponderous and dull. The movie stopped to film the strangest of common day activities, sequences that shine some light on what life might have been like in late sixties San Fransisco, but weighed down the motion picture as a whole. Like Bullitt smelling onions at a corner grocery store. If you're an anthropologist who specializes in 60s American culture, this movie is a gold mine of information, the Rosetta Stone for post-Kennedy Americana. If you're a fan of fast-paced action movies centered on a cop anti-hero, you'll be disappointed. Or at the least you'll have to readjust your expectations as you watch McQueen sniff his produce for freshness and buy whole stacks of Swanson TV dinners.

This must have been riveting stuff back in the day. And I have to admit that McQueen has stage presence. But my generation's bad-boy cop was Bruce Willis in the Die Hard series. Live Free and Die Hard further cemented my fan-boy affection for Bruce as the rogue cop. I just can't think of any actor, past or present, who does it better. Maybe Willis and the Die Hard series owe Bullitt a debt for paving the way, but they're vastly better movies all around.

Now if Steve McQueen had flown his Mustang into the side of a hovering helicopter, maybe things would be different.