Bullitt

On a Friday night in Chicago mobster Johnny Ross flees the Outfit. The next morning SFPD detective Lieutenant Frank Bullitt and his team, Delgetti and Stanton are tasked by politically-ambitious Walter Chalmers with guarding Ross over the weekend, until he can be presented as a witness to a Senate subcommittee hearing on organized crime on Monday morning. The detectives are told he is in a cheap hotel on Embarcadero. Delgetti will take the first shift, then Stanton and then Bullitt. At 1am Sunday, while Stanton is phoning Bullitt to say Chalmers and a friend want to come up, Ross unchains the room door. Two hitmen burst in shooting Stanton in the leg and Ross in the neck.
Chalmers holds Bullitt responsible for the injuries to Ross. After Bullitt thwarts a second assassination attempt at the hospital, Ross dies from his wounds. Bullitt sends the body to the morgue as a John Doe to keep the investigation open. An informant says that Ross was in town because he stole millions of dollars from the mob. Bullitt also finds out he made a long distance phone call to a hotel in San Mateo.
While driving his Ford Mustang, Bullitt becomes aware he is being followed by a Dodge Charger driven by the two hitmen. An extended chase ensues through the streets of San Francisco to Brisbane where the Dodge crashes off the road, killing its occupants in a fiery explosion.
Bullitt and Delgetti are confronted by their boss, Captain Sam Bennett, and Chalmers (who is being assisted by SFPD Captain Baker). After being served a writ of habeus corpus, Bullitt reveals that Ross has died. Bennett ignores the writ because it's the weekend and lets Bullitt investigate the long distance phone call to San Mateo. With no car, Bullitt gets a ride from his girlfriend Cathy. At the hotel, Bullitt finds the woman who was phoned garrotted in her room. But Cathy follows him and is left horrified by the scene. On the way back to San Francisco she confronts Bullitt about his work saying "Frank, you live in a sewer" and wonders "What will happen to us?"
While examining the victim's luggage, Bullitt and Delgetti discover a travel brochure for Rome and traveler's checks made out to an Albert and Dorothy Renick. Bullitt requests their passport applications from Chicago. Bullitt, Captain Bennett, Chalmers and Captain Baker gather around the telecopier as the applications arrive. It turns out Chalmers sent Bullitt to guard an Albert Renick, a used car salesman from Chicago, while his wife Dorothy was staying in San Mateo. Bullitt realizes that Ross was playing Chalmers by using Renick as a body double to escape the country Sunday night.
At San Francisco International Airport, Delgetti and Bullitt watch the Rome gate. However, Ross (now using Renick's passport) has switched to an earlier London flight. Bullitt boards the plane after it is ordered to return to the terminal but the mobster escapes through the rear cabin door. In the crowded passenger terminal, Ross kills a deputy sheriff before being shot dead by Bullitt. Chalmers arrives but leaves after saying nothing.
Early Monday morning, Bullitt comes home to find Cathy asleep in his bed having chosen to stay.