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In Blue Steel, Ron Silver plays a great example of a movie psycho. Movie psychos, like real life serial killers, have patterns and obsessions, sometimes sexual, that manifest in their crimes. Silver here is obsessed by the heroine played by Jamie Lee Curtis because she's a cop who killed an armed robber in front of him, gets a sexual thrill from waving around the gun he stole from the crime scene, and likes his victims to face him when he kills them. Movie psychos, unlike some real life serial killers, magically emerge as psychos based on a single triggering event, in this case the aforementioned killing of the armed robber. Movie psychos also tend to be supernaturally good planners, and Silver here has a knack for setting up situations to look as bad as possible for Curtis when she tries to investigate him. One reliable trope for showing the audience the extent of the movie psycho's depravity is by showing him (or her, but in my experience it's always been a man) in the nude. I recently saw this in Angel, where the killer scrubs himself with his private parts facing a window with no curtains, and there's a version of this trope in Die Hard 2, which has William Sadler practicing naked martial arts within the first few minutes (perhaps the best known example). Silver here picks up a hooker and right after we cut to him rubbing her blood all over his body while he's standing outside in the buff. I point all this out not to knock the movie for being cliched but to say that Silver plays his role with enough verve to make it a non-issue. Perhaps the most novel element in his characterization is his day job as a commodities trader, predating American Psycho in linking finance to psychopathy. It's less forcefully developed here, but there is a correlation drawn between his excitement both on and off the job.
It goes without saying that Curtis is excellent as well, but as Roger Ebert suggested in his review, her casting brings with it certain associations. Obviously the killings in here invite a comparison to her early slasher movies, but so does the gender subtext. The misogyny here isn't coming from the killer (who seems to be an equal opportunity murderer), but the condescending police culture Curtis brushes up against. (An early scene has her browbeaten for her indignation at hearing a colleague tell a crass joke about an accident involving a hooker.) This movie predates the recent cultural awareness about police accountability, and it seems to be very much on the heroine's side when she's questioned for allegedly cavalier behaviour in the line of duty, but we also get the sense that she wouldn't be under the same scrutiny were she a man. The abusive marriage of her parents feels like a clumsy attempt to link multiple strands of misogyny, but it does interestingly frame policework as a power fantasy, giving the heroine a sense of control she lacked when her father beat her mother.
On that front, the movie seems astute about the aesthetic, even erotic qualities of a police uniform, heightening the implied sensuality of suiting up sequences in action movies when juxtaposing such scenes here with the villain's fetishization of the heroine. And obviously, there's the eroticism around gun fetishism in such movies as well, first made explicit when we see the villain producing the gun from his crotch during a bathroom break. With these qualities in mind, I couldn't help but think of William Friedkin's Cruising as an influence, and there are scenes here that borrow the blue-heavy look and nocturnal ambience of the nighttime scenes in that movie. (This movie has substantially less sexual content, but that it gets most of its nudity through the aforementioned naked psycho trope seems like a deliberate choice.) And like that movie, this is held together by muscular direction by Kathryn Bigelow, who produces some of the same visceral qualities that would come to fruition in her next film Point Break, and concludes in a thrilling shootout that makes interesting use of the realities of early morning foot traffic.
Blue Steel (Bigelow, 1990)
In Blue Steel, Ron Silver plays a great example of a movie psycho. Movie psychos, like real life serial killers, have patterns and obsessions, sometimes sexual, that manifest in their crimes. Silver here is obsessed by the heroine played by Jamie Lee Curtis because she's a cop who killed an armed robber in front of him, gets a sexual thrill from waving around the gun he stole from the crime scene, and likes his victims to face him when he kills them. Movie psychos, unlike some real life serial killers, magically emerge as psychos based on a single triggering event, in this case the aforementioned killing of the armed robber. Movie psychos also tend to be supernaturally good planners, and Silver here has a knack for setting up situations to look as bad as possible for Curtis when she tries to investigate him. One reliable trope for showing the audience the extent of the movie psycho's depravity is by showing him (or her, but in my experience it's always been a man) in the nude. I recently saw this in Angel, where the killer scrubs himself with his private parts facing a window with no curtains, and there's a version of this trope in Die Hard 2, which has William Sadler practicing naked martial arts within the first few minutes (perhaps the best known example). Silver here picks up a hooker and right after we cut to him rubbing her blood all over his body while he's standing outside in the buff. I point all this out not to knock the movie for being cliched but to say that Silver plays his role with enough verve to make it a non-issue. Perhaps the most novel element in his characterization is his day job as a commodities trader, predating American Psycho in linking finance to psychopathy. It's less forcefully developed here, but there is a correlation drawn between his excitement both on and off the job.
It goes without saying that Curtis is excellent as well, but as Roger Ebert suggested in his review, her casting brings with it certain associations. Obviously the killings in here invite a comparison to her early slasher movies, but so does the gender subtext. The misogyny here isn't coming from the killer (who seems to be an equal opportunity murderer), but the condescending police culture Curtis brushes up against. (An early scene has her browbeaten for her indignation at hearing a colleague tell a crass joke about an accident involving a hooker.) This movie predates the recent cultural awareness about police accountability, and it seems to be very much on the heroine's side when she's questioned for allegedly cavalier behaviour in the line of duty, but we also get the sense that she wouldn't be under the same scrutiny were she a man. The abusive marriage of her parents feels like a clumsy attempt to link multiple strands of misogyny, but it does interestingly frame policework as a power fantasy, giving the heroine a sense of control she lacked when her father beat her mother.
On that front, the movie seems astute about the aesthetic, even erotic qualities of a police uniform, heightening the implied sensuality of suiting up sequences in action movies when juxtaposing such scenes here with the villain's fetishization of the heroine. And obviously, there's the eroticism around gun fetishism in such movies as well, first made explicit when we see the villain producing the gun from his crotch during a bathroom break. With these qualities in mind, I couldn't help but think of William Friedkin's Cruising as an influence, and there are scenes here that borrow the blue-heavy look and nocturnal ambience of the nighttime scenes in that movie. (This movie has substantially less sexual content, but that it gets most of its nudity through the aforementioned naked psycho trope seems like a deliberate choice.) And like that movie, this is held together by muscular direction by Kathryn Bigelow, who produces some of the same visceral qualities that would come to fruition in her next film Point Break, and concludes in a thrilling shootout that makes interesting use of the realities of early morning foot traffic.