Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My husband and I watched "Bullitt" last night and I was amazed at how it held up. Beautiful cinematography, crisp scenes, timeless delima and the major bad guy getting away with his arrogance. Steve McQueen is gorgeous, as is Jaqueline Bassett, and the dialogue is spare and so modern. The car chase scene is still phenomenal and so realistic. San Francisco looks empty, but then decades ago it was not the traffic pileup it is today. McQueen's character is relentless and refuses to compromise until he has the answers, so this film is the companion piece to LA Confidential, because both McQueen's character and Russell Crowe's character won't give up. But they are different men in eras that define them, so Crowe is sloppy and violent, and McQueen is cool and tacturn. McQueen was not in very many good films, but his charisma is stunning. Crowe recently has been in forgettable films, but at least he has some great films in his resume. McQueen died so young and tragically that who knows what he might have accomplished. I wish better things for Crowe.