Product Review

Peter Yates's 1968 cop drama has its existentialist pretensions, but there is something seductive about its strained seriousness and Steve McQueen's intentionally stoic performance as a San Francisco police detective on the trail of a murderer. A couple of key action sequences boost the film's stature, the most memorable of which is a vertiginous car chase that Yates almost approaches as a dance. Jacqueline Bisset provides window dressing as Bullitt's girlfriend--worried about how much his job strips away his humanity--and Robert Vaughan is almost reptilian as an opportunistic politician. --Tom Keogh