Blue Steel (Bigelow, 1990): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.55pm
This 35mm presentation, also screening on February 7th, is part of the Kathryn Bigelow season. Full details here.Time Out review:
On her first day of active duty, rookie NY cop Megan Turner (Jamie Lee Curtis)
surprises a supermarket robber and blows him away. Suspended for
shooting an unarmed suspect (his gun has mysteriously disappeared),
Megan is later seducedby charming commodities-broker Eugene Hunt
(Ron Silver). Then dead bodies start turning up all over town, killed with
bullets fired from her gun and etched with her name. Detective Nick Mann
(Clancy Brown) takes Megan under his wing, but even when Hunt virtually
confesses to the crimes, the disturbing cat-and-mouse games have just
begun. Curtis gives her most complex performance to date as the reckless
Megan, whose obsessive behaviour and over-reactions have more to do
with turning the tables on violent men than balancing the scales of
justice. Short on plausibility but preserving the psycho-sexual
ambiguities throughout, Kathryn Bigelow's seductively stylish, wildy fetishistic
thriller is proof that a woman can enter a traditionally male world
and, like Megan, beat men at their own game.
Nigel Floyd
Here (and above) is the trailer.
