Blue Steel is a police thriller directed by Kathryn Bigelow and released in 1990. It was distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and starred Jamie Lee Curtis, Ron Silver, and Clancy Brown. The film is remembered for its solid start and Jamie Lee Curtis’ standout performance. Curtis won an award for best actress at the Mystfest awards that year, and the movie also received a Best Film award nomination. Let’s take a look at some of the defining features of this ’90s cop thriller.

Gripping Premise

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

One of the standout features of Blue Steel is its strong opener. The plot starts out as a slow-burn, tense mystery film that sees the audience empathizing with the protagonist Megan Turner, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. On Megan’s first day as an NYPD officer, she seemingly by chance becomes involved in a supermarket robbery. During the course of the robbery, the perpetrator drew a weapon to shoot Megan, so she shot and killed them first.
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Mysteriously, the perpetrator’s gun disappeared at the scene, and the police could not find a trace of it. Worse still, there are no witnesses that saw a gun, so Megan is suspended from the force after her first day on the job. Things get weird when a gun casing with Megan’s name carved in it shows up at a crime scene, allowing her to be reinstated and brought onto the case. She starts working with another homicide detective named Nick after this murder starts to be repeated in a series of killings.

The police think someone in Megan’s life must be the murderer and intend to use her to get the murderer to show himself. Little did she know that her new boyfriend she has in her life, named Eugene, had been stalking her for a while and had been interfering in her life in subtle ways. It was Eugene that took the perpetrator’s gun after he experienced a psychotic break during the robbery. This psychotic episode caused him to become immensely obsessed with Megan, leading him to try to get as close to her as possible. Megan has no hard evidence against him as his confession, so she must try to convince her colleagues that she is telling the truth, despite them not believing her. At the same time, she must play nice with the murderer to stop him from killing again until she can stop him.

The opening part of the movie is a tense thriller that is made nerve-wracking by the audience being entirely in Megan’s shoes. The mystery and plot revelations are surprising, and even when knowing the truth, Megan and the audience feel helpless to prevent evil forces from prevailing.

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Jamie Lee Curtis at Her Best

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Jamie Lee Curtis delivers a solid performance that anchors the film. The film doubles as a character study of a psychopath, and Curtis’s performance provides a nice contrast to the cold, calculating nature of the killer. Megan is a two-sided character who is tough and stands up for herself, but she is also vulnerable. Curtis portrays this dynamic perfectly through the nuances of her performance.

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Kathryn Bigelow’s Directing Style

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Kathryn Bigelow has a unique directing style that puts a different spin on the police thriller formula. Bigelow puts a big emphasis on the use of imagery and violence to get a reaction from the audience. She expertly crafts shots and scenes to squeeze the maximum amount of impact from each scene. Bigelow makes excellent use of slow-motion to provide key emphasis to scenes, making the imagery even more memorable in the viewer’s mind. She has a detached style that makes her films esthetically pleasing and a great viewing experience.

It Echoes John Carpenter’s Halloween

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It is hard to escape the famous role Jamie Lee Curtis played in John Carpenter’s Halloween franchise. Curtis’ character and performance carry that tradition forward as she once again must confront a mysterious psychotic killer that she seems helpless against. This time, though, she has the training and the will to finish the job. Curtis gets a violent showdown with the killer that was a precursor to what her character became in the later Halloween films. In an interview with Roger Ebert, Curtis described how her performance felt different from how horror films play out. She remarked how strange it was to be back in a movie again with a killer who will not die.

It Falls Off at the End

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

When people remember Blue Steel, they often talk about how the ending is not as satisfying as it could have been. The film has an ambitious and promising premise, but ultimately, it needs to deliver on the character dynamic between Megan and Eugene. It does not adequately explore the dynamics of their relationship after the first half of the film, ultimately favoring a classic action ending when it could have taken things a step further.