Peter Yates's Bullitt (1968) will forever be remembered for its cat-and-mouse car chase. Unlike films built from car chases (the Fast and Furious franchise, 2001-), Bullitt's chase comes in the middle of the film and goes through as many tempo changes (grave, lento ... andante, moderato ... vivace, presto) as a Bartok piano concerto.
I finally watched Bullitt in its entirety last week and found it to be almost as an uncluttered as another of Yates's cat-and-mouse films, The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), which features amazing performances by Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle and Richard Jordan, but no extended car chase.
The picture up top comes at the moment the followers (the assassins) look in the rearview mirror and discover they are the followed (by Lieutenant Bullitt). Eventually they make a break for it, and it is then that we have our chase.
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