More grist for the remake mill (from Dark Horizons):
Bullitt: Channel 4 indicates Brad Pitt will step into Steve McQueen's footsteps in a remake of classic crime/car chase thriller. Pitt will get to work on the project once "Ocean's 12" wraps.
I must be getting numb to the whole concept of movie remakes, because this one doesn't irritate me too much. Pitt's not a horrible choice, especially since the studio probably looked into getting Keanu Reeves. No one will ever out-cool Steve McQueen, of course, and ultimately I think this movie's a bad idea, but the casting isn't really the problem.
The original "Bullitt" featured what is still one of the greatest car chases of all time. It took three weeks to shoot, and though it occupied less than ten minutes of screen time, it's impressive to this day. The people remaking "Bullitt" are going to feel obligated to shoot a chase scene, and that's where their problems will begin.
To start with, there isn't a car nowadays that Pitt could (on a police detective's salary) realistically drive that compares to McQueen's original Mustang GT390. He may actually end up driving the same vehicle - in an homage to El Steve - or even some other classic muscle car, but this leads to a bigger issue. "Bullitt" was, for better or worse, the inspiration for every car chase in every cop-oriented TV show and movie for the next twenty years. Now that CGI is well upon us, crap like "The Fast and the Furious" make the vehicularly impossible into cinematic reality. We'll eventually get to the point where computer animation is so seamless you can't tell the difference between reality and rendered image, but no one will care. Audiences will never experience the same awe they felt when they first saw Steve McQueen tear through the streets of San Francisco, because it'll always be in the back of their mind that what they're seeing is completely illusory.
More illusory than usual for a movie, I mean.
Which is what may ultimately doom "Bullitt." Without the car chase, the original was just another cop movie. A cop movie with solid performances and a great score, for sure, but nothing groundbreaking...except for the car chase. The usual caveats apply (haven't seen it, haven't read the script, etc.), but if this ends up getting made don't be surprised to see more "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" than "To Live and Die in L.A."
but no one will care
And why should they? It's a re-make. Eff Hollywood and all these remakes. Is there not an original writer in the whole of this land? Yes, there are, but nobody with the cabbage seems able to find them.
Great, it's the millionth film in the grand tradition of The Spy Hunter Who Loved Starsky.
You know what we need? we need more subtle thriller films, where if somebody shoots a gun or drives over 30 mph it means that something has gone horribly wrong. We need cunning plots and feats of superhuman observation and cutting dialogue and strange unexplainable things. They can CGI everything else, but the F/X wizards will never be able to find a way to one-up good screenwriting.