Bullitt

Deliberate mistake: When Bullitt enters the hotel room to do a Recki, we see photos of the injured man on the wall. From this we can conclude one of two actions. 1: The ambulance crew took so long to arrive, the police had plenty of time to take a variety of photos from many angles. 2: The police did not let the medics in until they had taken their photos of a man who was in need of immediate medical attention. Wouldn't the injured man rather have his wounds seen to first than his photo taken?

Deliberate mistake: Vaughn is reading the Wall Street Journal folded in half as his limo leaves the airport at the end of the movie. The headline is facing the camera right side up, which means the folded part he is reading has to be upside down. No doubt WSJ paid for the spot and demanded their name be right side up.

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Suggested correction: Having just watched the movie the WSJ is folded when Vaughn enters the backseat of the limo, but as the camera moves to a front on view as the limo pulls away Vaughn can be seen unfolding the newspaper before he begins reading.

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Mistakes

Plot hole: The movie is based on one huge plot hole: if it wasn't for the "professional" hitman's sloppy work, Bullitt and his team wouldn't have been needed for much. The hitman enters the hotel room, wounds the policeman, then shoots the target with one shotgun blast to his upper left shoulder area. Any hitman worth his fee knows that this is not likely to be an immediately fatal wound. The hitman had a pump shotgun and should have finished the job right then and there. Surely he had more than two shells. Instead, he sees the target is slumped unconscious, then leaves the hotel room without checking to see that his victim really is dead. Nothing seems to be immediately threatening the hit team, though. The hitman spends the rest of his life trying to finish his job and pays the ultimate price for being lazy.

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Quotes

Chalmers: Ross.
Bennet: Albert Edward Renick, used car salesman, Chicago.
Chalmers: Who's Renick?
Bullitt: He was the man who was shot in the Hotel Daniels. You sent us to guard the wrong man, Mr. Chalmers.

David George

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Trivia

Trivia: In the restaurant scene near the beginning of the film, the actor playing the waiter accidentally flips the corner of the menu in Steve McQueen's eye, but it was left in the finished film.

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Questions

Question: What character did the actor John Aprea play in the movie? The credits at the end lists him as 'The Killer', but who did he kill? He wasn't one of the two hit men at the hotel.

Answer: Notice: Aprea is credited as "Killer", not "The Killer." I think this confuses reviewers, as they assume he must be one of the hit men. However, the hit men are credited as "Phil" (Bill Hickman) and "Mike" (Paul Genge). Genge is much older than Aprea and Aprea does not look like the grey-haired hit man, as another contributor has pointed out already. There is no other killer in the plot. Perhaps Aprea's scenes were cut.

Answer: Even Tarantino gets this wrong in his book "Cinema Speculation" (2022), where he repeatedly refers to Aprea as the hospital killer. I could hardly believe he didn't know this was Genge, and I suspect it was a copy editor's mistake, as Tarantino probably did not include the parentheticals himself.

Answer: The doctor that alerts Bullitt that the grey-haired hitman is in the hospital looks like Aprea. He calls himself Dr. Kenner, and that character is uncredited. Maybe "Killer" was supposed to be "Kenner" in the credits?

Answer: Aprea portrays the Organization hood who shoots wildly at Johnny Ross as Ross' car careens out of the parking lot into and down the alley during his getaway in Chicago.

Answer: In a Bullitt movie clip on the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) website, it identifies John Aprea as the killer who goes to the hospital to murder the witness. Bullitt chases him to the basement toward the end of the film.

raywest ★

The killer that Bullitt chases is Paul gange (listed in the credits in the role of "Mike") despite the TCM website. Aprea is listed in the movie's credits as the killer, but also lists gange as Mike. Look the name up on IMDB and you can see from his photo that he is the guy Bullitt chases. Why John Aprea - at least 20 years younger than the killer in the movie - is credited as the killer, I have no idea. And I have no idea where in the movie Aprea really appeara.

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