Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Rookie cop Megan Turner orders a burglar to drop his gun. He whirls to shoot. Too late. Turner fires, killing him instantly. When someone lifts the assailant's gun from the crime scene, the police hold Turner accountable for killing an unarmed man. That same someone carves Turner's name into the bullets and uses them in a series of murders. Turner teams up with detective Nick Mann to clear her name and catch the killer. But she is drawn into a deadly game of wits with a psychopath who's always one step ahead… and much closer than she thinks!
Blue Steel is a stylish neo-noir thriller from Kathryn Bigelow that earns high marks for its cinematography — Amir Mokri's close-up fetishization of the gun and sleek, neon-drenched New York visuals are genuinely striking and distinctive. Jamie Lee Curtis commits fully to the role and Ron Silver delivers an unsettling, magnetic turn as the psychopath, lifting the acting above average. The plot, however, is riddled with contrivances and logic gaps that undermine its psychological ambitions — the heroine's repeated poor decisions strain credibility. The film's concept (female rookie cop stalked by a fetishistic killer) has some novelty, particularly through its feminist lens on a male-dominated genre, but it doesn't fully distinguish itself in storytelling terms. The climax devolves into a fairly rote action-thriller resolution that squanders the tension built earlier.