Movie review: Blue Steel
May. 4th, 2010 09:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficI'll be honest with you, this is pretty much a feminist remake of The Hitcher (also written by Eric Red). Now there're enough turns to keep it fresh and The Hitcher is a strong enough story to hang two films on, but it does feel like a rehash at times. I get the feeling that if you got all William Goldman and walked both screenplays action beat for action beat, you'd get depressed.
The story here is that Jamie Lee Curtis plays a rookie cop, and she's good in the role, making her character tough and likable without being a fearless supercop (When patronizingly asked why a woman would want to become a cop, she answers "I like slamming people's heads into walls."). While foiling a hold-up, she runs afoul of Ron Silver, who (dun dun DUN!) takes the criminal's gun after she shoots him.
From there, he becomes obsessed to her, leading to the best part of the movie, where he arranges a meet-cute and dates her. Silver acts charming and endearingly adorkable, but then you listen to what he's actually saying (and remember that time when he shot a guy on the sidewalk) and remember he's a crazy-critter. Meanwhile, Curtis thinks she's in a romantic comedy instead of a thriller.
As I said, it's the same basic story as The Hitcher, with Silver becoming a nigh-unstoppable boogeyman and Curtis being unable to convince the authorities that he's up to no good. The fact that Curtis is a working-class woman and Silver is an upper-class man gives the story a bit of subversiveness, and director Kathryn Bigelow adds to that themes of gun violence, phallic imagery (the credits sequence of a gun being loaded looks like it could've been guest-directed by Revolver Ocelot), and a character actually named 'Mann.'
The thing is, the movie doesn't go into any depth on Ron Silver's character. That worked in The Hitcher, where Rutger Hauer was playing an archetypal, almost supernatural figure, but here, it's just frustratingly opaque. We don't know if he was always crazy or if seeing Curtis gun down someone drove him crazy or anything about him. I admire the thematic restraint in not making him a raving misogynist, but really, his motivations change just about every half hour.
I do think it is worth a rental, just watch The Hitcher first. If you're really into the Remix Redux, they'd make an interesting double feature.
The story here is that Jamie Lee Curtis plays a rookie cop, and she's good in the role, making her character tough and likable without being a fearless supercop (When patronizingly asked why a woman would want to become a cop, she answers "I like slamming people's heads into walls."). While foiling a hold-up, she runs afoul of Ron Silver, who (dun dun DUN!) takes the criminal's gun after she shoots him.
From there, he becomes obsessed to her, leading to the best part of the movie, where he arranges a meet-cute and dates her. Silver acts charming and endearingly adorkable, but then you listen to what he's actually saying (and remember that time when he shot a guy on the sidewalk) and remember he's a crazy-critter. Meanwhile, Curtis thinks she's in a romantic comedy instead of a thriller.
As I said, it's the same basic story as The Hitcher, with Silver becoming a nigh-unstoppable boogeyman and Curtis being unable to convince the authorities that he's up to no good. The fact that Curtis is a working-class woman and Silver is an upper-class man gives the story a bit of subversiveness, and director Kathryn Bigelow adds to that themes of gun violence, phallic imagery (the credits sequence of a gun being loaded looks like it could've been guest-directed by Revolver Ocelot), and a character actually named 'Mann.'
The thing is, the movie doesn't go into any depth on Ron Silver's character. That worked in The Hitcher, where Rutger Hauer was playing an archetypal, almost supernatural figure, but here, it's just frustratingly opaque. We don't know if he was always crazy or if seeing Curtis gun down someone drove him crazy or anything about him. I admire the thematic restraint in not making him a raving misogynist, but really, his motivations change just about every half hour.
I do think it is worth a rental, just watch The Hitcher first. If you're really into the Remix Redux, they'd make an interesting double feature.
