It's hard to write Blue Steel completely off the map because of (a) Jamie Lee Curtis, (b) Kathryn Bigelow, and (c) its noiry, metallically inclined cinematography. It's a shame that so much of the film wastes its time traveling through various clichés and laughable plot twists as so much of it is truly inspired in its delivery. Megan Turner (Curtis) is a rookie cop who immediately makes a mistake that would make most want to immediately shrivel up and die: She overreacts to a store robbery and shoots the gunman with a gratuitous number of bullets. Megan is suspended. No gun was found at the crime scene.She is assigned to desk work, but after only a few days on the job, her world is rocked. Someone is gunning down innocents, carefully carving her name on the bullet in hopes to frame her. The police chief hesitantly promotes her to detective status so she can investigate, but he, as most other police chiefs in movies do, makes it clear that he is already heavily doubting every word that comes out of her mouth. Megan's professional life may be in the slums, but her personal life, in the meantime, is picking up. She begins dating Eugene Hunt (Ron Hunt), a well-to-do stockbroker. The relationship gets so hot and heavy so quickly that it's almost as if it was made to fit fluidly in the film's 102 minute running time.Eugene, as it turns out, isn't just a stockbroker. On the night Megan fatally confronted the store robber, Eugene was one of the customers confined to the floor. And guess what? He was the one who took the gun from the crime scene. And guess what else? He is the man who is murdering all those helpless civilians. It doesn't take long for Megan to discover just how disturbed her new boyfriend truly is, but no matter how many times she arrests him, he gets away, considering he has a high powered lawyer and her police chief hates her. But when Eugene begins killing people close to Megan, she takes the law into her own hands.The plot is so implausible that it's impossible to take Blue Steel seriously. At its core, it's an above-average B-movie that looks like a luscious art house thriller. If only the substance was as breathtaking as the style. Bigelow, who directed and co-wrote the screenplay, has gone on to bigger and better things, now living as an Academy adored filmmaker who has created masterpieces such as The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty. Blue Steel is her third film, and it's hard to call it a complete failure. Yes, the story is like a weird, erotically violent cop fantasy, but stylistically, it's certainly strong. Making use of silhouettes, city street smoke, and neon, the night scenes are certainly intoxicating, and the score, while sometimes a little too 1990 for its own good, provides an industrially minded, synthy backdrop that subtly exudes a cyber punk cool.Curtis makes for a fantastic woman in trouble, more relentless than she was in Halloween. Without her, the film would completely collapse. Despite the thousands of issues that come along with the plot, Curtis is consistently enthralling, acting up a storm in her action scenes and fulfilling likability in sequences of dialogue. Silver, however, is the film's weak link and most likely why it fails as hard as frequently as it does. Any actor could have made Eugene Psychopath of 1990, but Silver goes much too far. He's so over-the-top that any hamminess verges on irritability. Just look at the way he shoots people. He somehow gets away with it time and time again, but how does no one in the streets notice the way he dramatically lifts the weapon over his head and brings in down with the slow motion theatrics of Joan Crawford on the move?Blue Steel is a tough one to dislike. It's eye-catching and contains an important performance in Curtis' underrated career, but one can hardly tolerate an annoyingly off-the-rails Silver and a too-stupid-for-its-own- good storyline.

On her first day on the job, officer Megan Turner shoots and kills the perpetrator of a supermarket hold-up. Since no gun was found on the perpetrator's person or at the scene, she is suspended from active duty. But she is quickly reinstated to the position of homicide detective because a used shell casing from the bullet used in a subsequent murder had her name carved on it. Eventually, the murderer shows himself to her. Commodities trader Eugene Hunt, who she meets following her suspension and starts to see. But he also confesses to her that he was in the supermarket at the time of the hold-up and that he fled the scene with the perpetrator's gun. The shooting caused psychosis which resulted in among other things his obsession with her......I'm in no doubt that the film has endless flaws and gaping plot holes, but if you like Bigelows sense of direction and mise en scene, this is a brilliant film to watch.But seeing it over twenty years after my last viewing, two things struck me. It's very similar to Charles Bronsans' 1983 exploitation thriller 10 til' midnight, am I'm pretty sure that Christian Bale did a little research with this when psyching himself up for his defining role, Patrick Bateman.But take away all the eighties sheen, and the wonderful haunting soundtrack, it's just a by the numbers thriller that we've seen time and time again.Out of all of her movies, this has to be the one that got away, because not many people have seen it, and its hard to find (I came across it on The Horror Channel of all places),The acting is great, especially Silver, who gets the eighties yuppy down to a tee, and Curtis as the girl next door cop, having personal problems galore, and then getting it on with the Kurgan.So all in all, its not a bad film by any means, it's visually stunning, but it's just a little too familiar.But, Bigelows next movie was Point Break, and that's one of the greatest films of the nineties.

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.

There have always been so few female directors working in mainstream cinema, I always try to see as many of their films as I can. In this case it was a film by Kathryn Bigelow, 1989's cop thriller 'Blue Steel.'Jamie Lee Curtis plays a rookie cop who guns down a robber in a grocery store hold-up. Unbeknownst to her, a stockbroker, played by Ron Silver, picks up the crooks gun. Soon he's obsessed with Curtis and out in the streets at night murdering random people. He tracks her down, stalks her, even takes her to dinner. When Curtis finds out that he's the madman responsible for the murders plaguing the city, they both enter into a deadly game of cat and mouse.I've always found Kathryn Bigelow interesting. Unlike acclaimed female directors like Jane Campion and Mira Nair, Bigelow's films are aggressive, even masculine. Some of her credits include 'Near Dark,' 'Point Break,' 'Strange Days,' and this years critical hit 'The Hurt Locker.' Watching any of these films you'd have no idea they had a female behind the camera. And that's why I like her so much. She breaks the mold of what kind of pictures female directors 'should' make.So I was looking forward to sitting down and enjoying 'Blue Steel.' Sadly, I really didn't. The problem isn't the acting or directing, it's the script. The first half of the film is tight and suspenseful, but the second half is full of clichés and plot holes. The cinematography however, is pretty good, and sort of distracts you from the dull proceedings. It's reminiscent of a Ridley Scott film from the 80's.All in all, 'Blue Steel' isn't terrible, it's just not very believable or exciting. There was a great movie that could have been made here, but because of the lousy script, we got a mediocre one.