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When producer Philip D’Antoni first got his hands on a novel entitled Mute Witness and began to think about turning it into a movie, he and co-producer Ernest Pintoff immediately considered Spencer Tracy for the lead role. At the time, Tracy was in the latter part of his career, as was the lead character in the book – an overweight police detective assigned to protect a mob witness who is about to testify to a Senate subcommittee on organised crime. However, when Tracy died in 1967, a new star was brought in – and with Steve McQueen on board, the entire film was reshaped from a standard cop movie into something altogether new.
These days, Bullitt is widely seen as one of the most important action movies ever made because of its bravura car chase, which has rarely been bettered. In fact, director Peter Yates is still predominantly remembered for that chase, despite directing other great films like The Friends of Eddie Coyle and The Hot Rock. However, I’d argue that McQueen coming on board the project and changing it so completely into a star vehicle that played to his strengths as a taciturn, stoic man of action is of equal importance for another reason.
A few years ago, I made it a point to re-watch many classic cop movies from the 1960s and ’70s. Naturally, the likes of Bullitt and The French Connection stood out head and shoulders above most others – but there was something different about Bullitt. As I watched it, I began to realise that it felt like an action movie, while The French Connection was a cop movie with some action sequences included. That mightn’t seem like an important distinction, but I believe it is when you look at how action movies continued to develop, especially in the ’80s and ’90s.
To me, Bullitt is a forebearer to action classics like Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, and even Bad Boys. These films, like Bullitt, have gun-toting cops as their lead characters and they may pay lip service to the police trying to solve a case, but the movies aren’t actually about the investigation. Instead, they’re about the explosive action and fiery pyrotechnics that result from the investigation.
We don’t watch Lethal Weapon to pay close attention to how Riggs and Murtaugh follow clues to bring the bad guys to justice; we watch it to see them bicker and become best pals, all while shooting hoards of villains. Similarly, in Bullitt, the structure that holds up the plot – the organised crime subcommittee – is mainly an excuse to throw Frank Bullitt, the coolest darn cop that cinema has ever seen, into an adventure with multiple thrilling, action-heavy set-pieces.
On the other hand, The French Connection, even though it features Gene Hackman in an iconic tough guy role, doesn’t quite operate in the same way. Yes, it has an equally pulse-pounding car chase, which D’Antoni mainly wanted to execute to see if he could top Bullitt somehow. However, in this William Friedkin classic, the investigation is the most important thing, and the car chase serves to show how unhinged ‘Popeye’ Doyle has become in his quest to bring drug dealer Alain Charnier to justice. The action is informed by the character in Friedkin’s film, whereas in Bullitt, the action informs the character. Or, as Tom Sizemore’s character in Michael Mann’s Heat says with such passion, “The action is the juice.
So, when McQueen signed up for Bullitt, and the script was retooled into an action movie with a much younger, fitter, cooler male lead, it laid the foundation for future generations. No longer did cop movies have to solely feature slovenly, weathered guys who looked like they lived on cigarettes and coffee conducting investigations by pounding the pavement, interviewing witnesses, and filing paperwork. Yes, plenty of films like that were still made, but there was also this new strain of ‘cop as action hero’ film that was a whole different beast entirely.
In this regard, Bullitt is more important and more influential than simply being the McQueen movie with that mind-boggling car chase.
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