From the caressing close-ups of a .38 revolver over the opening credits to the climactic image of a spent weapon being dramatically dropped on a car seat, Blue Steel interrogates the notion of gun worship, all within the confines of a shoot-em-up police thriller. Jamie Lee Curtis stars as Megan Turner, a New York City cop who empties her revolver into a man holding up a grocery store on her first day on the job. When the robber’s gun drops to the ground in front of shopper Eugene Hunt (Ron Silver), it seems to cast an alluring spell. Hunt slips it into his pocket, complicating the internal-affairs investigation of Turner’s actions. Seemingly under the gun’s command (there’s a wacko, Gollum-like scene in which Hunt hears it talking to him), he begins shooting strangers execution-style each night. At the same time, he starts dating Turner, who doesn’t recognize him from the grocery-store incident. It’s a complicated conceit that director and co-screenwriter Kathryn Bigelow (Near Dark, The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) never quite wrestles into a convincing narrative. (She also fails to convince Silver to dial things down a notch or two, which would have been helpful.) But Curtis gives a compelling, complicated performance, suggesting that part of the appeal of joining “the force” for the willowy Turner is the green light to use force on others. There are many unsettling scenes in Blue Steel, but maybe none more than the early moment when Turner and her friend (Elizabeth Peña) pose for a photo at her academy graduation ceremony. Told to “act like a cop,” Turner grabs her friend from behind and holds her fingers, in the shape of a gun, to her head.
(10/19/2022)
