Review of: Blue Steel

I admit to being a bit of a Kathryn Bigelow fanboy, so when this release from Vestron went up on pre-order, I was all over it.  Bigelow directed my favorite film of all time, Point Break. She also directed what is arguably the most underrated vampire film of all time in Near Dark. This was all years before she would win numerous awards for the Hurt Locker.

Jamie Lee Curtis stars as Megan Turner. A young cop fresh out of the academy. On her first day, she tries to stop a grocery store robbery and ends up emptying six rounds into the robber’s chest. Just a bit part by Tom Sizemore here, but he is always a welcome addition to any cast. The gun the robber was holding disappears, and Turner is put on probation for shooting someone without any evidence of a gun. The witnesses stated there was a weapon, but no weapon was found.

Enter Eugene, played by the ever so creepy and deranged Ron Silver. Eugene is a non-assuming stockbroker who becomes increasingly obsessed with Megan. He puts himself in the right places at the right times to interact with Megan to insert himself into her life. He also is the man who picks up the gun and sets out to kill random people. Not before etching Megan’s name in the side over every bullet, though, so it makes it look like she is the killer. The film works fine up to this point, but it’s when Eugene reveals himself to be the stalker that things wobble a bit.

A homicide detective, played by the always excellent Clancy Brown, gets Megan reinstated and tries to protect her while also trying to track the killer. The problem is that once our characters know who the killer is, Eugene just happens to be the smartest psychopath ever created. He is always one step ahead of the cops. He seems to know all the ends and outs of the law and how to evade being prosecuted. We aren’t really given much warning to this as Eugene is about as white bread and straight-laced as it gets.

Eugene ends up killing Megan’s best friend and getting away with it. He ends up at her parent’s house after she almost arrests her dad. To be honest, that scene went nowhere. I know he was making the point that he knows where they live, but he shows up, introduces himself, and then decides it’s time to go. It pops up at a weird time as well because we are literally being confronted with Megan addressing her dad’s abuse of her mother.  No one on the police force believes her. Eventually, Nick ( Brown) is convinced, but by that time, he almost bites it himself.

The shootout at the end feels very early nineties. Michael Bay seems to eventually take some queues from this, as it gets pretty wild in execution. She knocks out a cop. Gets out of the hospital. Walks the beat as a street cop. Eugene tracks her. Then they have this massive shootout. Now, here is the thing: it sounds like I didn’t like it—quite the contrary. I really enjoyed it. It just takes a few more clicks on the suspension of disbelief meter. Not a big deal, but it’s a grounded-in-reality thriller cop movie. Eugene becomes insanely psychotic, and the world just seems to not exist anymore outside of this narrow universe.

Jamie Lee was fantastic and is in great shape. Ron Silver is incredibly over the top once his insanity flares up, until then he just seems like a slightly awkward dude. Clancy Brown is always reliable and, to be honest, seems a little underutilized towards the end. He becomes a main character but isn’t one in the beginning. Also, Richard Jenkins plays a small role as Silver’s lawyer.

This was recently released on Blu-ray by Vestron, and it looks great. You can pick it up fairly cheap to add to your Jamie Lee, Clancy Brown, or Kathyrn Bigelow collections. It’s a good movie; it just feels like it might have benefitted from maybe ten more minutes of run time or even ten fewer minutes and cut out some of the side stories that need to be solved rather quickly. I know that sounds strange, but either way something with the side plot points and issues should have been addressed.