Plot: A rookie policewoman, Megan, brought up in a violent environment, shoots an armed robber during her first patrol. The gun ends up in the hands of a deranged Wall Street broker, who starts a violent spree while trying to seduce Megan.
Comments: With time, I've learned to avoid any film directed by Kathryn Bigelow. These days they often come as half-baked, pretentious or just bad affairs. But there was a time when she used to be an interesting filmmaker, and "Blue Steel" is perhaps her best film. Starting with close-ups of a revolver and partial shots of Jamie Lee Curtis playing to the electronic gasps of Brad Fiedel, it shouldn't come up as a surprise that this is a film about guns, violence and the almost sexual thrills they can produce.
During the film both Jamie Lee Curtis and Ron Silver's characters try to channel those compulsions in different ways. Megan (Jamie Lee Curtis) comes from a dysfunctional family and a violent background. She chooses the way of repression, becoming a policewoman, a job were violence is legal, but only under the right circumstances. Eugene (Ron Silver) also lives in an ambience of implied violence: his scenes at work always show him shouting and holding papers in the air, surrounded by other brokers in similar attitudes. He instead chooses the way of exteriorizing violence, going in a killing spree with a gun that accidentally falls in his hands.
Kathryn Bigelow shots both actors accordingly. Jamie Lee Curtis often appears tight-liped, her hair restrained in a ponytail and her sexuality contained, if not entirely hidden under a police uniform or male clothes. in the occasional moments when she loosens up a little she still can't help to act somehow agresively would-be suitors or co-workers. Ron Silver, on the other hand, often appears acting maniacally, letting whatever emotions run through his mind take reign of him.
"Blue Steel" is, for the most part, a great film. Co-writer Erid Red has a knack for tying together opposite characters and exploring madness, the same way he did in "The Hitcher". Regretably, there's only one way the film can end, with a showdown where one of the character has to end up consumed by his compulsions, so it's no surprise that the film ends just like that. On its way to said denouement, the film also often gets too close to offering generic psycho-thriller moments, and Kathryn Bigelow's stylish, detached camerawork can only hide that for a while.
But know what? I still like it more than I should.
