Bullit – I finally watched it.

 

I finally watched Bullit for the first time last night. I have owned the movie for a while now, but only just got around to watching it.

Most of the movie is dead boring, to be honest. With moments of real intensity breaking up the monotonous story.

I know McQueen meant to play the strong quiet type, that was his thing, but in this movie he was too quiet, way too quiet. Surely about half the movie is just him staring at the screen brooding. He was much better in The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven. And I don't just say this because the movie is old, some of my favourite movies come from that era. The aforementioned movies, Where Eagles Dare, The Dirty Dozen, Commancheros, Chisum, and many, many movies as well. No, I just think he did not have a good enough cast to play of, and the movie was longer than the story required, really.

The car chase was still worth watching. It deserves to have its iconic status. To me the most remarkable thing about the car chase is not just how well they chose the cars, but it is also the fact that so few modern cars could even do that car chase today. The hills of San Francisco would kill most performance cars made since about 1990, except for a few exceptions. You need a powerful car with live axles, very strong suspension preferably lead sprung, and older cars were massively over built, which is why you pay a premium for them today. They will outlast many of their modern rivals for that very reason, their frames were just so sturdy. You have to keep on top of the rust in the body and you need to be able to continue sourcing led for their engines, of course, but with the right maintenance, they are hard to break.

The movie was worth watching. But, personally, I think the creators of many cop movies looked at this movie and thought, "We can do way better." And they would be right. I think Clint Eastwoods movies are examples of that.

I would like to see an Aussie remake of the movie, set in the 70's. I would swap the Dodge and Mustang with a 1971 XYGTHO and 74 Monaro GTS. That could work. In fact, I think that movie would do really well. Australia has a legacy of great fast car movies, it is time to bring it back.