Bullitt (1968)

Directed by Peter Yates. With Steve McQueen, Jacqueline Bisset, Robert Vaughn, Don Gordon. An all guts, no glory San Francisco cop becomes determined to find the underworld kingpin that killed the witness in his protection.

Bullitt is a 1968 American thriller film directed by Peter Yates and produced by Philip D'Antoni. The picture stars Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, and Jacqueline Bisset.

Robert L. Pike's crime novel Mute Witness makes the transition to the big screen in this film from director Peter Yates. In one of his most famous roles, Steve McQueen stars as tough-guy police detective Frank Bullitt. The story begins with Bullitt assigned to a seemingly routine detail, protecting mafia informant Johnny Ross (Pat Renella), who is scheduled to testify against his Mob cronies before a Senate subcommittee in San Francisco. But when a pair of hitmen ambush their secret location, fatally wounding Ross, things don't add up for Bullitt, so he decides to investigate the case on his own. Unfortunately for him, ambitious senator Walter Chalmers (Robert Vaughn), the head of the aforementioned subcommittee, wants to shut his investigation down, hindering Bullitt's plan to not only bring the killers to justice but discover who leaked the location of the hideout. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi

Steve McQueen is sometimes criticized for only playing "himself" in the movies. This misses the boat, I think. Stars like McQueen, Bogart, Wayne or Newman aren't primarily actors, but presences. They have a myth, a personal legend they've built up in our minds during many movies, and when they try to play against that image it usually looks phony.

Just the early part of the famous chase, as cop Steve McQueen (title character) in the Mustang turns the tables the hit men (John Aprea, Paul Genge) in the Dodge Charger, in a geographically incoherent San Francisco, in Bullitt, 1968.

The star of arguably cinema’s greatest chase was long thought to be lost to history, but it’s just been in a New Jersey garage for a few decades.

'Bullitt' delivers the leader-to-leader bravura action that few films even dare promise without chucking reason or integrity.

The charismatic McQueen racing through San Francisco’s impossibly steep streets in pursuit of justice is as irresistible today as it was 50 years ago

Here’s a car movie that’s so significant it’s not only been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant," but Ford named special editions of the Mustang in its honor. Here, Frank Bullett (Steve McQueen) is a hardboiled San Francisco cop on the trail of a mob boss who whacked a witness who was under his protection. The centerpiece of the film is a classic car chase – arguably the best in motion picture history – in which Bullett pilots his green 1968 Mustang up and down the hills of San Francisco in hot pursuit by two hit men in a 1968 Dodge Charger. Bullett would wind up driving off with an Oscar for Film Editing.

San Francisco movie locations from classic films

Fifty years ago…

San Francisco detective (Steve McQueen) won't let go of mob-witness case.