There is a certain group of movies which I consider perfect and when a new DVD edition of a particular movie is being released or it’s being shown on television, I will write about it.
One of them is being shown tonight at 8 p.m. CST on Turner Classic Movies.
It’s “Bullitt”, a 1968 police thriller starring Steve McQueen. McQueen plays Lt. Frank Bullitt, a San Francisco police detective assigned with two other detectives to guard a witness over the weekend in a seedy city hotel.
The witness is supposed to testify about the mafia Monday morning in front of U.S. Senate subcommittee in San Francisco. Bringing the witness to the hearing is the idea of local politician Walter Chalmers, played by Robert Vaughn.
When things go awry, it’s up to McQueen to get to the bottom of things and he is cool the entire time. He takes no b.s. from anyone, doesn’t suck up to authority and never gets ruffled.
This whole movie is cool. I first saw it in high school film class and loved it ever since.
Adding to the cool is the supporting cast, besides Vaughn, is Jacqueline Bisset, Simon Oakland, Don Gordon and Robert Duvall.
Bisset is his beautiful girlfriend who appears to be an architect and Oakland is McQueen’s boss who keeps his cool when Bullitt pushes the envelope on this case.
Duvall had a small, but important part as a cab driver. But he was cool doing it.
“Bullitt” contains what many consider the finest car chase ever put on film. Film editor Frank P. Keller won an Oscar for his work on the film and got a big boost from what he did with the car chase.
The film becomes downright frosty with the cool jazz-based score by Lalo Schifrin.
Not only is there a great car chase, but the finale includes a foot chase on the runways of the San Francisco airport and if you haven’t seen this part of the film, it’s jaw dropping.
So, you have a hip detective living in 1960s San Francisco, drives a 1968 Ford Mustang GT, has a hot girlfriend and gets the bad guy before the closing credits. How cool is that?
A LA CARTE ITEMS
It was announced today that CBS News’ top foreign correspondent, Lara Logan, and her producer were asked to take a leave of absence as a result of their recent report on the 2012 U.S. Consulate attack in Benghazi that killed four Americans including the U.S. Ambassador. The main source of the report, a security contractor, was no where near the consulate at the time of the attack, but said he was and gave specific details. The attack has taken on political overtones in this nation. But regardless, this was just awful journalism. How could they have not verified whether the main source of their story was legitimate before putting him on the air?
UNTIL NEXT TIME. . .
One cool movie. . .
26 Tuesday Nov 2013
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