Kathryn Bigelow’s 1990 film Blue Steel flirts with contrivance from the start. Megan Turner (Jamie Lee Curtis) joins the NYPD out of a desire to overcome an abusive childhood with a position of civic authority, then finds her job immediately threatened when a fatal shootout at a convenience store places her under internal-affairs review. To make matters more outlandish, Eugene Hunt (Ron Silver), a commodities trader whose theft of a gun from the crime scene prompted Turner’s investigation in the first place, begins to romantically pursue and eventually outright stalk her.
These are a lot of farfetched narrative strands to pile onto a B movie, but Bigelow uses this setup to deconstruct the eroticized violence of 1980s action cinema in a manner as striking and confrontational as her earlier Point Break. But if that film examined the homosocial bonds between men, Blue Steel leans into complex, insoluble gender politics about women joining a workforce associated with macho violence, analyzing how that violence may be as much an allure for someone like Megan as an ostensible repulsion.
The film communicates its ideas through fetishistic images, starting with the opening credits, which unfurl over close-ups of Turner’s service weapon being loaded as if chambering bullets were an act of foreplay. And whenever Turner fires that gun, she puts her whole body into the act, gripping it with both hands and leaning forward expectantly as she squeezes the trigger.
At last, Turner feels power in a world that gives so little to women, and even with everything on her plate she finds time to relitigate the moments of her life where she felt helpless, at one point handcuffing her own father, Frank (Philip Bosco), as belated revenge for her traumatic childhood. Even Hunt betrays moments of feverishly conflating his sexual and violent urges, as when he spies on Turner in bed with another cop, the tellingly named Nick Mann (Clancy Brown), and reflexively tightens his bleeding hand around his revolver.
Throughout, characters on both sides of the thin blue line are defined by the powerlessness they overcome through the possession and use of firearms. On her first patrol, Turner finds herself partnered with a Black officer who immediately bonds with her over their mutual interest in joining the force as a means of gaining a sense of authority as minorities with traditionally lower social status (“Nobody fucks with a cop,” the man recalls thinking even as a child). On the flipside, Eugene, a white man with a financially lucrative job in a society designed to venerate people like him, exudes an inner insecurity over his physical frailness that inspires him to take up a gun to rapaciously actualize a masculine brutality he never felt the confidence to air.
Blue Steel offers these insights in a bluntly pop-psychological manner, but it truly gets at an understanding of American gun culture that few more soberly mounted treatises on the topic approach: that in a system defined by so many inextricably linked forms of inequality and insecurity, the simplest way for someone to feel a sense of control over their own life is to know that they can take someone else’s. Bigelow allows the viewer to feel the catharsis of Turner’s violence but also the unnerved, almost post-orgasmic shudder of clarity that accompanies it.
Image/Sound
The transfer on this disc shows a few signs of debris in the form of faint spots and scratches but is otherwise sturdy. The film’s stark color palette—the steel grays, the dark blue of police uniforms, and the deep burgundy blood—is rendered cleanly, and flesh tones are realistic throughout. The stereo soundtrack gives ample weight to Brad Fiedel’s bass-heavy score and the explosions of gunfire, but dialogue remains clear in even the loudest moments.
Extras
Critic Alexandra Heller-Nichols provides an audio commentary that at times relies more on superlatives than meaningful analysis, but her insights into Kathryn Bigelow’s life and career and unpacking of the film’s fraught gender and social politics are valuable. Two film historians, Jennifer Moorman and Chris O’Neill, each contribute a video essay that examines Blue Steel’s psychosexual subtext. The disc also comes with interviews with editor Lee Percy and production designer Toby Corbett. The former offers insights into his career and his collaboration with a hands-on Bigelow on this film, while the latter clarifies the inspiration that he took from Turner’s handgun to convey the atmosphere of menacing intent that pervades Blue Steel, as in the scene that likens the hallway in Eugene’s apartment to a gun barrel.
Overall
Vestron Video’s Blu-ray of Kathryn Bigelow’s psychological cop thriller offers a solid A/V transfer and extras that passionately argue for the film’s underappreciated boldness and power.
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Jake, thank you for your thoughtful reading of Blue Steel. I appreciate your comments about my work. I would like to clarify that the “gun barrel” image was reflected in Eugene’s apartment not Megan’s family home. I’m sorry if my comments led you astray. Toby Corbett.