Blue Steel (1990)

A Disappointing Continuation

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Yeah, I know. This is an old movie, why write a review about it now? Well, because I just saw it and I was shocked. Kathryn Bigelow did some great stuff, which is a big reason I decided to watch it. Ditto for Ron Silver. Jamie Lee? Eh... Now, I won't lay this on our girl, here, but she plays the absolute DUMBEST cop you could ever imagine. You shoot a man and neglect to secure his weapon on the floor? You shoot him SIX times? What if he'd had an unseen partner nearby? You don't make sure that witness statements are taken before leaving the scene? A man grabs you from behind and you can't think to step on his instep hard enough to distract him? Getting into uniform - with white sneakers? Going after a dangerous killer so you handcuff your partner to the cruiser? So many more - too many to count. She, and Ms. Bigelow, made police look like idiots, and I resent that. Even rookie cops aren't this dumb.

There's a scene early in Blue Steel where newly sworn-in cop Jamie Lee Curtis passes a couple of girls from the neighborhood. The two women do a spinning double take over the sight of a female police officer. Curtis smiles proudly and swaggers on past them. How you react to this scene pretty much will decide whether or not you are capable of enjoying this movie. The scene, like the film, begs to be ridiculed. Blue Steel is full of clichés and characters who act like "types" instead of real people. The dialogue is often cringeworthy and trite. The plot makes little sense. I'm pretty sure the screenwriters started with about fifty pages of F words and tried to write a script around that. However, despite all this, I find myself enjoying this movie.Curtis is a very likable lead, if not wholly believable. She's certainly easy on the eyes. The supporting cast does great considering the material. Ron Silver, an actor I've never been particularly fond of, gives the performance of his career. He must have been on a scenery-chewing diet because he overacts like it's going out of style in this movie. The direction is slick and the movie has a polish to it that gives it a different look than most cop films up to that point. Overall it's an enjoyable and sometimes sexy thriller, with some unintentionally hilarious moments throughout.As for that scene I mentioned at the start of this review: my own reaction was to roll my eyes and then smile. I fully recognize the corniness of the scene. But sometimes I like corn.

Difficult to know what to make of this one. The cinematography is beautiful, as is Jamie Lee Curtis as New York cop Megan Turner.She has the misfortune to come across a supermarket robber on her first day of active service and ends up killing him. Unfortunately the robber's weapon disappears as it is stolen by Eugene Hunt (Ron Silver) who is a mentally ill trader with a fixation on Turner, who reciprocates his advances! With no weapon and despite witnesses and cctv, she is suspended from her job, giving her time to mess around with Hunt. It's never made clear what she sees in this creep. He's nuts.Clancy Brown plays Nick Mann, fellow detective who teams up with a reinstated Turner to try to find the 44 Magnum killer who always leaves a shell etched with Turner's name at the scene of the killings.The plot is odd but actually quite interesting. Curtis is very watchable, and the director knows it. Overall, a slightly flawed gem, and worth viewing.

I had been wanting to see Blue Steel for a long time, since I was a teenager. I had seen a commercial for a showing on the weekend late night movie, but had chosen to watch SNL instead because some actress was hosting.I rented it over ten years later, and was in for a profound disappointment. Although it had a stolen gun premise that has made for such great films as Stray Dog, it suffers from horrible execution.Although it has some decently directed action scenes, Blue Steel suffers from an abysmal, genuinely stupid script. The stupidity sets in from the very beginning, with a major plot hole being the basis of the entire film. The lapses in logic continue throughout the film, cumulating to sink any verisimilitude the film might have had.Compounding the failures of logic in the script is the mediocre acting. Jaime Lee Curtis is unconvincing as a rookie police officer, while Clancy Brown lacks charisma as the homicide detective paired with her. Although the late Ron Silver has some chilling moments as the psychotic murderer, he at times succumbs to overacting. His scenes on the Stock Exchange floor are laugh inducing.The film does benefit from good direction and photography. The viewer definitely gets a preview of the skills that would win Kathryn Bigelow a Best Picture Oscar. What a pity those skills had to be saddled on a piece of junk like this.