Blue Steel

The opening credits are accompanied by elegant tracking shots over a shiny blue landscape, which turns out to be the service revolver of a New York policewoman in close-up: Blue Steel. On one of her first missions, cop Megan Turner (captivating Jamie Lee Curtis) shoots a shoplifter in self-defence, but his weapon remains untraced: A stockbroker (Ron Silver) has taken it with him and is using it to blaze a trail of murder through the city. At the same time, he approaches Megan in a very friendly manner. The policewoman soon comes under suspicion herself until she realises the true nature of her psychopathic lover and a deadly battle begins. An eerie fetish thriller with the logic of a nightmare. Kathryn Bigelow conclusively turns a macho genre on its head by credibly placing a woman at the centre who is strong enough to assert herself in a man's world. Killer cinema about the war of the sexes. (C.H.)