Blue Steel
Collector’s Edition
review by Bobby Blakey
While Jamie Lee Curtis is most known for her iconic role in the Halloween franchise she has taken on a wide variety of genres throughout her career. In 1990 she teamed up with Near Dark, Point Break and Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow for the cop thriller Blue Steel co-staring Ron Silver and Clancy Brown. Now Lionsgate is bringing the film to Blu-ray through the Vestron Collection, but does it hold up and bring a compelling case to the fans or will it fail to hit its target?
Blue Steel follows newly minted NYPD officer Megan Turner, who responds to a grocery store robbery – and kills the perpetrator – her first day on the job. But Megan’s uncorroborated story of the shooting gets her suspended from active duty when the stickup gun mysteriously vanishes. Enter a charming-but-disturbed commodities trader (Ron Silver), whose obsession with Megan threatens to destroy everything she holds dear, pushing her into a desperate fight to salvage her reputation… and save her own life.
I remember working at a video store when this movie came out sadly couldn’t remember if I had ever actually watched it. I love getting to return to these older films and experiencing them for the first time especially in this case of the nostalgia of stocking it on the shelves. Now I have the memory of seeing the film with the past thought and glad I finally got to check it out.
The story of the film is pretty simple dealing with not only the rookie officer trying to prove herself to the force as well as navigate her personal life. The situation that sets it all off is straight-forward featuring the late Tome Sizemore
in an early role. It sets up her conflict, but also the next catalyst of the story and feeding into this person’s own unbalanced issues. Silver is so good here playing unhinged with a character I am assuming is based a lot on the Son of Sam and it plays into the thrills perfectly.
Curtis is great here and the film does good job at balancing out the two tales of these people on different paths that quickly collide. If there is an issue it is more lack of mystery to the story, but that isn’t really what they are going for. It is all placed right on the table for you and delivers the gritty cop thriller it sets out to do successfully and the type of film we just don’t get enough of these days.
In addition to the film, this release offers up bonus content including commentary, trailer, vintage promos and so much more. Grab your copy of Blue Steel available now on Blu-ray for the first time from Lionsgate Home Entertainment.