Johnny Ross works for Chicago mobster Peter Ross, his brother. In April 1968 Johnny Ross escapes two attempts on his life and flees to San Francisco, where he is placed in protective custody by politician Walter Chalmers, who hopes to use Ross to further his own national aspirations. To protect Ross, Chalmers asks the SFPD to assign Detective Lieutenant Frank Bullitt and his partners, Sergeants Don Delgetti and Carl Stanton, to guard him at a flophouse near an overhead freeway. It looks like a simple assignment, but at 1 AM the next day it all goes awry in a blast of a shotgun, leaving Stanton and Ross fighting for life at San Francisco General. Bullitt gets what information he can, but breathing down his neck is the angered Chalmers who vows to ruin Bullitt's career should Ross die. Bullitt gets a break when the gunman appears at the hospital to finish off Ross, and Bullitt gets a good look at him; now Bullitt must smoke out the gunman and his backup man before Chalmers carries out his threat, leading to a high-speed pursuit, a fiery crash at a gas station, and a fingerprint check that leads to a stunning discovery about Ross, and about a couple staying at a swanky hotel in San Mateo.
--Written by Michael Daly

User Comments: "Bullitt-speed", 18 December 2004
Author: (paul2001sw@yahoo.co.uk) from Saffron Walden, UK

The late 1960s saw two classic, hard-boiled thrillers set in San Fransico; John Boorman's stylised 'Point Blank', and Peter Yates' 'Bullitt'. Calling your hero Bullitt might seem an unsubtle way to emphasise his macho qualities, but in fact Steve MacQueen plays him as a quiet man, not some wise-talking maverick: he does what he has to do, but takes no pleasure in his actions; and survives the roughness of his work not by becoming a monster, but simply by becoming a little less human. It's a believable portrait, and the film as a whole has a procedural feel: there are action scenes, but these are kept in their place in the overall design.

Today, the film is most famous for its celebrated car chase, which makes excellent use, as indeed does the movie as a whole, of the bay area locations, but is not actually shot that excitingly: the conclusion at the airport is more original, though it roots the film in the time when it was permissible to take a loaded gun onto a plane. But overall this is still a classy film, dry, exciting and bleak, and among the very best films of its day. William Friedkin's brilliant 'The French Connection', made a short while afterwards, would appear to owe it a debt.