Pretty Good

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

This early Kathryn Bigelow thriller is not as accomplished as her later efforts ("Point Break", made just one year later, was a big leap forward), but you can see the signs of things to come. The film is sometimes dreamy, sometimes nightmarish, and sometimes very bloody. Bigelow creates a vivid New York atmosphere, and Brad Fiedel supplies a hypnotic music score. Ron Silver is very convincing as a psychopathic serial killer, Jamie Lee Curtis' awkwardness as a cop is built into her character. However, the script, co-written by Bigelow and Eric Red, is so unbelievable (from Silver's literally overnight transformation into a killing machine to his apparent imperviousness to bullets to Curtis' superiors stubbornly refusing to believe her until it's too late) that the movie becomes unintentionally (I think) funny at times. Still worth seeing for Bigelow's stylish direction. **1/2 out of 4.

Kathryn Bigelow directed three tip top genre films back in the late 80's/early 90's. Underrated masterpiece Strange Days, killer good vampire western Near Dark, and blazing, lurid cop thriller Blue Steel. Forget her films these days, they've dulled out the fire she used to project. It's all about her early work, and this one shows her love for outright brutality and noirish tendencies, no matter what the genre. Jamie Lee Curtis gets down and dirty as a rookie police officer who finds herself in deep, disturbing trouble when a lunatic targets her. A single stop at a gas station turns violent when a loose cannon petty thief (live wire Tom Sizemore in his film debut!) causes trouble, forcing her to shot him stone cold dead. The incident seems to be over, except for one thing: bystander Eugene Hunt (Ron Silver) witnesses the shooting in vivid detail, and something deep in his psyche snaps. He sinks away, and prompted by voices only he can hear, begins to commit murders using Curtis's gun left at the crime scene, even carving her name into the bullets he uses. This causes friction in the department, her job, sanity and personal life as the obsessed Hunt stalks and worms his way into her life with monstrous, psychotic determination. Silver is an actor who's made appearances here and there, always of the sinister variety and always excellent. This is his tour de force, an absolutely terrifying delusional schizophrenic who is fixated on Curtis's character with squirming intimacy. She's left to play cat and mouse with him, and being somewhat inexperienced, falls short of being able to deal with such a person. Help briefly comes in the form of Detective Nick Mann (a snarky Clancy Brown), but it's mostly just her and Hunt, locked in a deadly, bullet strewn tirade or near misses, uncomfortable confrontations and pulpy scenarios. Bigelow is a suspense expert and knows how to stage a tense sequence like no other, this being her most successful foray into tension and release, which is saying a lot when you look at her career. There's a nice bunch of supporting players too, including Louise Fletcher, Richard Jenkins, Elizabeth Pena, Philip Bosco, Mike Starr and Kevin Dunn. Tou

"Blue Steel" is an action-packed cop drama in which a female police officer is stalked by a violent psychopath who terrorises her and also puts the lives of her family and friends in danger. Her ordeal isn't helped by the lack of support that she receives from her employers or the negative way in which most people respond to her choice of career.Megan Turner (Jamie Lee Curtis) is a New York City cop who, on her first night in the job, shoots and kills a gunman who was holding up a supermarket. When the robber's gun falls to the floor, one of the customers, a commodities broker called Eugene Hunt (Ron Silver), picks it up and leaves. Shortly after the incident, Megan is suspended from duty because the absence of a weapon suggests that she may have panicked and killed an unarmed man.Soon, a number of dead bodies are found on the streets of the city and it becomes evident that they are all victims of a serial killer who's shooting people at random with bullets which have Megan's name inscribed on them. At this point, homicide detective Nick Martin (Clancy Brown) arranges for Megan to be reinstated in the hope that she can help him to catch the killer.The manipulative Eugene Hunt arranges to meet Megan and starts courting her and soon she starts to fall for him. His obsession with her was sparked by her actions on the night of the shooting and it takes a little time before Megan realises that he's seriously disturbed and very dangerous. The danger that Megan finds herself in then continues to escalate steadily as every effort she makes to stop his rampage meets with the same lack of success.Megan Turner's character is the main focus of this film and she's shown to be someone who, as a child, was made to feel angry and powerless because she grew up in a home where her mother was regularly beaten by her father. Her chosen career was attractive to her because it enabled her to exercise power over others and prevent herself from becoming a victim like her mother. Megan's anger, however, is ever present and so when she's asked why she chose to become a police officer, she replies in a semi-humorous way "I like to slam people's heads against walls". This remark is revealing because it's not the type of comment that any well-adjusted person would make and it highlights just how brittle a personality she is.Jamie Lee Curtis captures her character's mixture of toughness, determination and fear perfectly and Ron Silver makes a very strong impression as the unhinged villain who seems completely unstoppable."Blue Steel" is stylishly made and remains engaging throughout despite the fact that it requires a little too much suspension of disbelief at various junctures in order to enjoy it fully.

Jamie Lee Curtis joins the boys in blue and learns firsthand the perils of a man's world when her new boyfriend (Ron Silver) is revealed to be a psychotic killer with a gun fetish. It may look like any other modern cop show, but hiding underneath all the glossy imagery is a clever feminist agenda, suggesting that the only true gentleman in a jungle of male chauvinism is likely to also be an obsessed and impotent serial killer. In less insensitive hands the film might have stretched that idea beyond the voyeuristic opening credits (with its sexy shots of Curtis half dressed, fading to loving close-ups of a Smith and Wesson), but director Kathryn Bigelow and her co-writer Eric Red have enough problems simply honoring their obligations to credibility. At least three false climaxes come and go before the final, violent battle of the sexes, and the film ends in an unbelievable orgy of bloodletting more consistent with the scummy neuroses of Red's previous screen writing effort, 'The Hitcher', no doubt with a few creative pointers from co-producer (and master of sledgehammer subtlety) Oliver Stone.