Blue Steel

Kathryn Bigelow, USA, 1990, 102 minutes

Rookie cop Megan Turner (Curtis), on her first day in the job, kills someone who's holding up a supermarket cashier. Suspended for having over-reacted, things get worse when people turn up dead all over New York shot by police issue bullets with her name carved on them. Meanwhile, she's falling in love with Eugene, who she met when they shared a taxi home in the rain, and this has implications for her job.

This film shows what happens when a woman moves into a male dominated arena such as the police force, and has to subvert her own identity. This is quite consciously done in the putting on of uniform, and the fixation with guns in the opening titles.

Kathryn Bigelow, who also directed the decidedly macho Point Break, uses the conventional thriller structure, and subverts it by making a woman the emotional centre of the film, and someone whom the male characters react to. In a twist on the conventions of film noir, Megan's only weakness is a man, and this affects her work, where she has to be completely invulnerable. Megan is similar to Ripley in the Alien films, and Thelma and Louise in the way in which she becomes strong as a result of what happens to her. This is an action film, but the difference between this and other action films is that it shows the consequences of those actions, and the effect which they have on the central character. Consequently, the action is never gratuitous because it is an integral part of the character study which is at the centre of the film.

Review by Katherine Edge
Taken from EUFS Programme 1995-96