[7]

Al Pacino plays a New York police detective who goes deep under cover, posing as gay to root out a serial killer preying on gay men. Director William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection) stirred controversy for his depiction of the leather subculture. The gay community feared straight America might see the film and assume all gay men were leather daddies with Tom of Finland ‘staches. From the sound of it, Friedkin was simply fascinated by the subculture and never meant for it to be a depiction of all gay society. But at a time when gay men were only played for laughs in the media, and the community desperately wanted to be taken seriously, Cruising didn’t do them any favors.

Socio-political context aside, Cruising is so strange, I have to like it. The killer’s identity is never revealed — you catch a hand here, a boot there, a face in the shadows, a voice that becomes familiar. There are definitely shades of Hitchcock and Argento in the way the kill scenes are staged and in the tightly controlled color scheme. And since gay activists were constantly drowning out the film’s audio recordings, the entire film is looped (lip-synced), which further lends to the feeling of an Italian giallo. I also dug the synthesized score by Jack Nitzsche.

Intriguing suggestibility arises from quiet moments with Pacino’s character and increasingly strange interactions with his wife (Raiders of the Lost Ark‘s Karen Allen). You can infer several possibilities — is something awakening in Pacino’s character as a result of his underground experience? Is he gay? Is he the killer? The film’s open-endedness is one of its best qualities.

With Paul Sorvino, James Remar, a whole lot of jock straps, and a smattering of assless chaps.