At the time of the film's release, the exciting car chase scenes, featuring McQueen at the wheel in all driver-visual scenes, generated prodigious excitement. Leonard Maltin has called it a "now-classic car chase, one of the screen's all-time best." Emanuel Levy wrote in 2003 that ""Bullitt" contains one of the most exciting car chases in film history, a sequence that revolutionized Hollywood's standards." In his obituary for Peter Yates, Bruce Weber wrote, "Mr. Yates' reputation probably rests most securely on "Bullitt" (1968), his first American film – and indeed, on one particular scene, an extended car chase that instantly became a classic."