Cruising (DVD)

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In 1980 Al Pacino had just come off winning performances in "The Godfather," "Serpico," "Godfather II," "Dog Day Afternoon," "...And Justice for All," and "Bobby Deerfield." Director William Friedkin had just made the successful "French Connection" and "Exorcist." You'd think the two of them would have been an ideal team to produce a hard-edged thriller. Maybe. But "Cruising" wasn't it.

The Warner Bros. press release that accompanied this disc says that the movie "makes its long-awaited DVD debut." After watching the film, one can understand why WB waited so long to issue it on disc. It wasn't like the viewing public was clamoring to see it.

Pacino has made a career of playing tough guys, criminals, and cops in movies, and "Cruising" proves no exception. This time he's a New York City policeman, Steve Burns, who goes undercover to find a serial killer. So far, so good. The problem is that the killer is methodically knocking off gays, so Burns dons the disguise of a gay man in order to ferret out his prey. Again, we might not have a problem if the movie had made any attempt to portray the gay community in a fair and reasonable light. Instead, the movie goes out of its way to depict only one small segment of New York's gay subculture, presenting it as luridly and as grimly as possible.

Written and directed by Friedkin from a book by Gerald Walker, "Cruising" attempts to do three things: (1) describe how people change; (2) show us a section of the gay subculture we probably didn't know much about; and (3) provide a good murder mystery. Unhappily, the movie fails on all three counts.

The plot is simple enough. A series of grisly murders of gay men baffles the NYC police department. The killer has stabbed all of his victims with a short knife, and Friedkin spares us none of the graphic brutality. A police captain (Paul Sorvino) assigns one of his rookie cops, Steve Burns (Pacino), to go undercover and cruise the gay underground for possible clues on the murders. The captain chooses Burns because he looks like the previous victims--they were all handsome, young, and dark-haired. The victims also had an innocent appearance, something Pacino brings off nicely. Burns is an innocent here, a stranger in a strange land, and for the purposes of this investigation, he's the bait.

The idea is that as Burns gets more involved in the gay subculture, the more fascinated and perhaps even attracted by it he becomes. Then he finds a possible suspect, tracks him down, and the movie ends. There's not much more to it than that.

So, let's take those three ideas one at a time. First, the movie supposedly shows us how people change. Well, that's a nonstarter to begin with. There is really only one character in the movie, Pacino's Burns, and any change that occurs to him is uncertain. The movie never shows him sleeping with or becoming intimate with anyone except his fiancée, Nancy (played by Karen Allen). We do see him turning down invitations and flirtations from gay men in the clubs. As he becomes more involved in the case, Nancy tells him she notices he's acting differently, but that's about it. Otherwise, Burns just seems to behave in a more surly manner as the story progresses. In "Dog Day Afternoon" Pacino played an openly gay (or openly bisexual) man; here, we never actually find out where his character lies, so to speak. Maybe what Burns sees opens his eyes to the differences in people; maybe he matures through his experience by gaining new insights or new knowledge into gay life; but since we never find out, it is hardly enough to justify this part of the movie's theme.

Second, the movie shows us a segment of the gay subculture we might not have known about before. Well, yeah. Indeed, the movie rather delights in displaying cross-dressing, sadomasochistic, street-hustling, drug-addled, heavy-leather gays gyrating, posing, and engaging in various sexual activities in dark, smoke-filled cellar nightclubs. I'd wager the film spends a third of its time just lingering on these kinds of shots, with all of the gay participants looking bleak, dour, angry, or outright hostile. I mean, there isn't a person in this picture who appears to be enjoying himself, and it could lead some viewers to form the misconception that such seething, threatening, unhappy folks fill all of gay life. In other words, viewers could misinterpret the exceptions in this movie for the rule. Worse, the movie seems to show off this underground lifestyle for no other purpose than to titillate the viewer's curiosity.