Bradley Cooper isn’t terse and taciturn enough to play a reanimated Steve McQueen. And let’s not kid ourselves — Cooper won’t be playing a San Francisco cop named Frank Bullitt, who was modelled after the real-life Dave Toschi. He’ll be playing the Great McQueen, of course, and that shit is over and done with and 55 years old.
Cooper’s Bullitt can’t be some sensitive, lily-livered, kind-hearted detective. Moreover Steven Spielberg doesn’t have the courage or the character to direct a movie about a somewhat flinty loner cop who eats TV dinners and doesn’t know from 2022 woke sensibilities. Which is why they should abandon this project right now. Cooper is too sensitive and teary-eyed, and Spielberg doesn’t do hardball genre stuff…hell, he never has. McQueen is dead — leave him alone.
Okay, this could work if Spielberg and screenwriter Josh Singer decide to shoot it as a mid ’60s period thing.