Blue Steel

This is a bit of an oddity. Usually movies are either really good or really bad all the way through. Rarely do I see a film where there are a ton of good moments, but just as many dumb ones. I mean, this film really tries to take cop movies in a different direction in many ways. Example one: our hero cop is female. Example two: our obligatory psycho is a commodities trader(???). Example three: something I've never seen from a movie wacko: he actually hears voices! So many times the killer is without explanation doing what he's doing. But here, Silver actually has extended scenes where he's hearing someone(?) and possibly trying to fight them. It's never explained. Which is where we get into the negative elements, as Silver's motivation isn't fleshed out. Was he a psycho before the early scene shootout? Why is he a nut? We never know, except that he feels a certain power in killing. Plus, even though I appreciated the attempt, his freaky moments of hearing whomever come off a bit silly. But back on the good side he has some very effective moments with Curtis, which mix psychosis and sexualitly nicely. The NYC locations are also well used thanks to some nice cinematographic touches. Ah, alas, we must go back to the junk side, particularly Curtis' cliched superiors. All the typical "My ass in a sling! Mayor's ass in a sling! Chief's ass in a sling!" Or TWO superiors, who in reference to a scene from the beginning, falsely say that Curtis blew the guy's HEAD off. Her shots were grouped in his chest and never at his head. For them to TWICE proclaim otherwise put a big hole in their credibility. Then you have a totally underdeveloped subplot about Curtis father, who is apparently beating her mother. He is rightfully arrested only to be forgiven moments later and back at the house (what is veteran Bosco doing in such a poorly defined roll??). Or how bout when Jamie Lee beds down with a superior...right after the killer has just run off into the night in front of them!!! Tack on an overlong and predictable ending and you have something that started off in the right direction but quickly veered into an NYC pothole.

I agree with the reviewer prior to me. I am actually taking a film class at my college and we brought up the same points the last reviewer did.

It wasn't the best coherent film I seen.

The fact that the killer "mysteriously" knew where the protagonist was all the time and also knew all about her parents and friends was pretty absurd.

Not to sound redundant, but I agree that a little more info on the history of the murderer would have helped the audience when it came to perceiving and understanding the movie.

In the other side, when it comes to suspense I guess the movie is okay. If you're the type of person that doesn't care about how coherent a plot is and just like to see action, then you will like this film.

I remember first seeing "Blue Steel" on HBO when I was a little kid. My dad made me turn it off because it was too violent (I think it after the scene where Ron Silver kills a prostitute and rubs her bloody sweater all over his naked body). Needless to say, that is one of the few memorable moments in this otherwise dull psycho thriller. The plot is standard creep-stalks-vulnerable-woman-through-the-streets-of-New York fare. In this case, the stalkee is a rookie cop played by Jamie Lee Curtis, and the psycho is Wall Street commodities trader Ron Silver.

The flick has a few things going for it: slick direction by Kathryn Bigelow, who would go on to direct better movies than this one; some decent action scenes; moody lighting and cinematography, and an eerie synth score by Brad Fiedel. Put simply, I really do like the aesthetic of "Blue Steel." Pretty much everything else is abysmal, though. The script is terrible, the pacing is extremely awkward, and it struggles to hold any kind of tension. It starts off fairly well but then devolves into a series of endless scenes in which the psycho killer appears at random, disappears, is arrested and/or injured, disappears, reappears, etc. The first half is actually pretty good, as we see the Wall Street psycho lose his grip on reality and start a murder spree, all the while hearing voices telling him he is god. Unfortunately, the film becomes less interesting and more predictable as the minutes tick by.

This cast contributed everything they had to this work, the story line is awesome, and the execution is purely entertaining. So what went wrong? As slick as this stylish detective/thriller is, it lacks an ending which denotes the wit and keen intellect throughout. In other words, the ending was weak enough to throw off this whole work.

Jamie Lee Curtis, nor any of her cast mates represents the problem. The problem was in the writing, however, this is still quite compelling, and dramatizes an interesting story, which has the ability to pull you in and build some awesome suspense.

All in all, although it fails to deliver satisfactorily in the end, the process getting you there is quite entertaining.

It rates a 6.8/10 from...

the Fiend :.

Ron silver acted so bad. the script is so bad. in the store scene, she does not call for back up when she sees what was happeneing. and later ron silver takes away the gun, okay thats a bit surprising because there had been no introduction to his character until then, and funny jamie does not bother to stay behind and do the policework, thats okay because she is apparently too shocked and takes leave. later the chief accuses her of shooting ron silver too many times and also going to the extent of accusing her of shooting an unarmed man. now how about the people in the store, surely someone did see him, how about the security camera, how about the people in the streets, well nobody seems to have seen this guy hold the gun. Very poor film by any standards. Later silver shoots jamie's friend while holding jamie's neck with his arms, and she later says she did not see his face... what a stupid story.