David Nolan’s review published on Letterboxd:
Bullitt is so influential that it is a bit of a surprise to revisit the actual original, and realise that the aspects of Yates' excellent procedural that infiltrated pop culture are only one tiny element of the movie.
The car chase, the rolling streets of San Francisco and freeways of the Bay area, Lalo Schifrin's jazzy score, McQueen's immortal cool: these are what pop culture remembers. But Bullitt is a very European Hollywood movie, made by a young British filmmaker with an awareness of what was happening in cinema beyond the US.
So from the credit sequence, he makes this bold and arty, with ostentatious shots, unorthodox storytelling choices and Schifrin's score emphasised. McQueen is so perfectly cast, it feels like his career never quite caught in the same way again: his underplaying and charisma make a placid, seemingly indifferent protagonist utterly magnetic.
And the plot is a little confusing, treated by the film as a hyper-detailed procedural, cops doing their thing, intense male confrontations and confabs. It only breaks away from that a few times - for the three suspense set pieces, and for McQueen's scenes with love interest Bissett, there to humanise him and deliver a cringeworthy speech questioning his humanity.
Robert Vaughn is fantastic, the car chase is just as good as its reputation suggests, and the cynicism and downbeat frankness of the whole thing is extremely appealing, especially when set against some of the bloated cop thrillers that were to follow. Indeed, Bullitt remains that rare thing: a classic that is even better than its reputations suggests.