What do you think of the movie Cruising (1980)?

Movie Forums (http://www.movieforums.com/community/index.php)

- General Movie Discussion (http://www.movieforums.com/community/forumdisplay.php?f=2)

- - What do you think of the movie Cruising (1980)? (http://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?t=52083)

What do you think of the movie Cruising (1980)?

I just saw it and I found it to be a very peculiar and not sure what to think of it. I like the premise a lot, about a straight police detective having to go undercover in the homosexual BDSM underworld, in order to find a serial killer.

SPOILERS

But I thought maybe the movie kind of got repetitive a lot in the second act, as Pacino's character, spends most of his time just cruising around at random hoping the killer will pop up by luck, and he doesn't really do much else.

I mean in a lot of detective thrillers like Chinatown, The Big Sleep, or Seven for example, it's a puzzle that unravels with one piece of evidence, taking you into the next piece, etc. Here it just feels like maybe he is going through false suspects to fill in the second act, unless I am reading it wrong.

There is also the part of the plot, where the police Captain and his superior are talking and the superior tells him how the gay community is breathing down the department's throat to find the killer and they have to take off the gloves to find him

So their definition of taking off the gloves, is arresting a suspect, who they don't have much significant evidence, on and try to get a confession out of him. They do this by having a muscular man, wearing a thong, come into the room, and beat a confession out of him. They won't let him talk to a lawyer either.

So they want to take off the gloves cause the gay community is putting pressure on them, but wouldn't the gay community come down on them a lot harder, if the suspect decides to go to the media, and talk about how the police arrested him and wouldn't let him see a lawyer, and how they allowed a muscular man beat a confession out of him. A muscular freak in a thong at that.

It seems to me that the gay community would have a much bigger problem with that, then the police not being able to find the murderer yet, and it seemed so illogical.

Also, the ending is meant to ambiguous as to what really happened, but I felt it was too ambiguous perhaps, to the point where it came off as gimmicky, as if the filmmaker wanted to say look how far I can take the ambiguity, but I think he went too far, where the viewer just feels jerked around, at least I did.

But what do you think, maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way.

I saw it a relatively long time ago now. It must have been in the late Nineties, so it's hard to remember. I can recall the beginning quite well and vaguely Al Pacino's performance but not much else. However, reading that makes me want to see it again :).

Re: What do you think of the movie Cruising (1980)?

its not a bad thriller, i saw years ago but felt the material itchy, don t like gay themes...

Re: What do you think of the movie Cruising (1980)?

It’s high on my watchlist.

Re: What do you think of the movie Cruising (1980)?

Only watched it once about 5-6 years ago. From what i remember it's solid, there's good stuff going on and Pacino gives a solid performance, problem was that it wasn't the film Friedkin wanted to make. It was going to be alot heavier but the MPAA wouldn't allow most of the sexual stuff, according to Friedkin that cut footage no longer exists so there can't even be another cut in the future. As i said though it's been a while since i've watched it.

Re: What do you think of the movie Cruising (1980)?

Same exact boat as Camo. I watched it in the early 2010s... it's alright, but it definitely doesn't hold a candle Friedkin's classics like Sorcerer, French Connection, To Live and Die and LA, and the highly underrated Killer Joe.

Re: What do you think of the movie Cruising (1980)?

I haven't seen all of Friedkin's movies. I've seen about 7, and I can say that this is the weakest one.

I think it's impossible to fairly judge Cruising because it's not the film Friedkin intended at all. In the end he cut almost 40 minutes of footage, he has said it was important footage and that it was not so i'm not sure which either way that's a large chunk missing. UA apparently lost the footage and he thinks it was destroyed by them, wouldn't surprise me and it would be kinda ironic if homophobia was the reason for it. Obviously you can only judge what there is, just saying that it sounds alot different from Friedkins intention and it sounds like your problem with the ending would have been cleared up:

The Motion Picture Association of America originally gave Cruising an X rating. Friedkin claims he took the film before the MPAA board "50 times" at a cost of $50,000 and deleted 40 minutes of footage from the original cut before he secured an R rating.[3] The deleted footage, according to Friedkin, consisted entirely of footage from the clubs in which portions of the film were shot and consisted of "[a]bsolutely graphic sexuality....that material showed the most graphic homosexuality with Pacino watching, and with the intimation that he may have been participating."[4] In some discussions, Friedkin claims that the missing 40 minutes had no effect on the story or the characterizations,[3] but in others he states that the footage created "mysterious twists and turns (which [the film] no longer takes)", that the suspicion that Pacino's character may have himself become a killer was made more clear and that the missing footage simultaneously made the film both more and less ambiguous. When Friedkin sought to restore the missing footage for the film's DVD release, he discovered that United Artists no longer had it. He believes that UA destroyed the footage.[3] Some obscured sexual activity remains visible in the film as released, and Friedkin intercut a few frames of gay pornography into the first scene in which a murder is depicted.

Re: What do you think of the movie Cruising (1980)?

FWIW I read a comment a while back that the "muscular freak" was supposedly a technique used to ensure that the person being interrogated *wouldn't* run to the press etc as it was just too stupid and no-one would believe them. Probably apocryphal but the best explanation I've heard!!

Originally Posted by Camo (Post 1827289)

It was the early 80s and Pacino was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. It's not surprising that the studio made Friedkin kill footage depicting a major movie star as gay in a role.

Originally Posted by DocHoliday (Post 1827299)

It was the early 80s and Pacino was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. It's not surprising that the studio made Friedkin kill footage depicting a major movie star as gay in a role.

I didn't say it was surprising anywhere. That to me is homophobic and i don't think it was purely about Pacino anyway, they stripped the film of 99% of its intended sexuality purely because it was between men, and apparently destroyed the footage so it'd never see the light of day.

Re: What do you think of the movie Cruising (1980)?

I only saw it because Al Pacino was in it, but I don't like gay themed movies.

Originally Posted by Marco (Post 1827294)

Well even if they used the muscular man for that purpose, a confession obtained through torture, is inadmissible in court, so it would be moot, and the case would be still not resolved. So it would still be a waste of time, and just cause the police Captain more headaches then he already has.

Plus it doesn't matter if people won't believe him. It still makes the police look bad. What if the guy left out the part about the thong and just said the cops beat him and showed them the bruise on his face? That would be enough to make the gay community more infuriated. But either way, it makes no sense plot wise, since a beaten confession cannot be used in court.

Re: What do you think of the movie Cruising (1980)?

It was okay, wasn't as good as Hardcore(1979) and Tightrope (1984)

Re: What do you think of the movie Cruising (1980)?

But I remember seeing an interview where William Friedkin said that he shot that 45 minutes, with the intention of cutting it and destroying it. He said that he was worried about the movie getting an X rating so he shot 45 minutes of homosexual sex scenes so that the MPAA will be so distracted in shock and awe, with wanting him to cut that, that they would overlook the rest of the movie's content.

So this 40-45 minutes of destroyed footage, was meant to be cut and destroyed on purpose and was just shot and edited in as a tactic, to get an R rating, instead of X.

So therefore, the movie wasn't meant to have it originally. At least that's what he said in the interview I recall.