Starring: Al Pacino, Paul Sorvino, Karen Allen, Ed O’Neill, Joe Spinell, Mike Starr, James Remar, and Alan Matthews from Boy Meets World
Grade: C-
Captain Edelson brings in Steve Burns to ask him to go undercover in the rougher S&M scene of the time period. This is a lot to ask for someone who’s relatively new to the force. It has to be handled delicately. So, what was his opener to Burns?
“You ever have your cock sucked by a man?”
This was the best you came up with Captain?
Summary
In New York City, a severed arm is found in the Hudson River. When they take it to be examined, one detective asks to see if it can be matched to the torso that came in last month. The guy says it can be a homicide if they find a fingerprint, but the annoyed detective demands him to give him a cause of death if that’s the case. Without a cause of death, he can’t prosecute unless he finds the rest of the body, so this is essentially a waste of time for the detective. Apparently, he’s too busy for this. For now, all the severed body parts found are put in storage under the label of “Circumstances Undetermined Pending Police Investigation”. That night, patrolmen DiSimone (Spinell) and Desher (Starr) ride around together. After acknowledging how awful New York has become, they harass two men in drag, pick them up, and force the two to suck them off. At the same time, a leather clad man heads into a gay S&M club and picks up some guy. They go back to a hotel and have sex. Afterwards, the leather clad man threatens the guy with a knife and ties him up. Then, he brutally stabs him to death.
The next day, Captain Edelson (Sorvino) is given all the details of the murder including the fact that killer’s semen doesn’t have sperm in it. Based off of the wounds and how the killer is right-handed, the other investigator deduces that it matches up with the other murder pretty well. After Captain Edelson questions one of the men who was assaulted by DiSimone and Desher about people he knows in the underground scene to try and connect someone with the murders, the guy takes Edelson aside to tell him that the patrolmen are bad people, and he was forced to give one of them head. Edelson is infuriated at this accusation and kicks him out of his office. Sometime after, Edelson calls in cop Steve Burns (Pacino) for a special assignment. Edelson brings up the murders of Paul Vincent of Colombia University and actor Loren Lucas, and he thinks they are connected to the bodies showing up in the Hudson River. He wants Burns to go undercover to investigate. He’s perfect for the job because he matches the physical type of the victims the killer seems to gravitate towards. However, Edelson makes it clear that this isn’t the ordinary homosexual life he will be investigating. It’s the grimier S&M scene. He won’t have a gun or badge, he will report only to Edelson, and he’ll get paid once a month. Nobody can know what he’s doing. When this is over though, he will have more experience than any of the detectives working currently for the department. Seeing that he can skip patrol and get a gold shield right away, Burns accepts.
That night, he tells his girlfriend Nancy (Allen) how he will have to go away for a while for this job but again, he can’t tell her any details. Soon after, Burns moves into his apartment. He finds a bunch of gay porno magazines in the apartment left by the old tenant, so he throws them into a garbage can on the staircase. As he does this, fellow tenant and playwright Ted Bailey (Don Scardino) interrupts and introduces himself. Burns introduces himself as “John Forbes”. He tells Ted about the magazines, so Ted notes that the previous tenant who lived there, Bobby, was into some “exotic” things. Then, he tells Burns to not throw the magazines in the trash because the landlord wants them to be stacked, so she can sell them. Ted and Burns go out for a cup of coffee where the friendly Ted talks about his life and how his roommate Gregory Milanese (Remar) helps them get by because of his steady work as a dancer. Right now, Gregory is out of town working on a musical. Burns makes up some story about how he just quit art school and how he’s looking for work as a commercial artist. Next, Ted changes the subject by bringing up the killer who’s targeting gay men and how poorly the cops have handled the situation. He talks about how five to six months ago, there was a murder of a teacher at Colombia (Paul Vincent, who Edelson told Burns about), and he was in ten pieces. Even so, nothing came of it, and it was barely covered.
That night, Burns goes out to survey the nightclub scene and get a feel for things. He stops at a convenience store in-between club trips and asks the worker the meaning behind the colored handkerchiefs everyone seems to have on them. Well, the rules are very specific:
- The light blue handkerchief in your back left pocket means you want a blow job. If you have it in your back right pocket, it means you’ll give one.
- The green handkerchief in your back left pocket means you are a “hustler”. If you have it in your back right pocket, it means you are a “buyer”.
- The yellow handkerchief in your back left pocket means you give golden showers. If you have it in your back right pocket, it means you want to receive one.
Burns stops him before he gets to talk about the red one.
Later on, Burns has the yellow handkerchief in his pocket, so some guy approaches him at the club asking if he likes “water sports”. Burns denies this and just says he likes to watch, so the guy gets pissed off at him and tells him to take the handkerchief out his pocket.
Though off to a rough start, Burns gets more and more acclimated in his persona and the underground S&M scene, meeting more people and getting used to his surroundings at a quick pace. He meets with Edelson to get his first payment and tells him that one name has come up a lot in his conversations with bartenders and regulars alike, Tommy Mancusi. Also known as “Tommy the Joker”, the man owns “The Cockpit” and four to five other places. Unfortunately, Edelson says they can’t move in on Tommy but won’t give him a reason why. Even so, the investigation is just getting started for Burns. As things start to eat at him and dig into his personal life, the murders still continue to happen.
My Thoughts:
Cruising has a complicated legacy. Regardless of whether you think it was some underrated masterpiece or a regular old crime thriller masquerading as something more than it is, one thing is for sure is that it attracts attention from cinema lovers purely for being one of the very few mainstream Hollywood productions centered around the S&M scene within the gay community. It’s still a subject rarely touched on even today, despite its popularity in New York in the 60s and 70s. Even so, considering the talent involved in this production like a prime Al Pacino and famed director William Friedkin, the overall product is a bit of a letdown.
Make no mistake about it, the initial idea is an attention grabber. Putting a relatively innocent and good-natured cop into this type of scenario where he can’t break character exudes enough excitement for us to want to tune in but an equal amount of anxiousness to go along with it because we’re not sure how deep this film is willing to go into this world. This is why the movie is able to sustain its suspense and intensity throughout the entirety of its runtime. Unfortunately, it never fully capitalizes on this anticipation that it builds so well. Director William Friedkin loses the audience about midway through when it starts to become more obvious that he’s just filming things for shock value rather than substance. Some may argue the reasoning otherwise, but I just don’t see it. How many slow sequences in nightclubs showcasing this niche part of the gay community in Caligula-like scenarios do we have to sit through to see how it adds to the story or character developments regarding Steve Burns? At first, it works in its mission to startle the audience, as well as present to Burns the world he’s walking into. However, these elongated sequences of Burns just observing these random clubs happens constantly to the point where it just feels like we’re watching things to freak us out. We get the point after the first sequence. Now, we want to know how these surroundings are affecting the personalities showcased in it. If you combine both in multiple intercuts, it can work, but Friedkin doesn’t even attempt it. Once we see the formula, it just feels like we’re wasting time when we could spend it learning more about these characters and how they’re feeling.
This goes from top to bottom.
One person in particular who stood out to me as underutilized is Karen Allen’s Nancy, Burns’s girlfriend. Being how important she is for a character like Burns given the situation, you would think her role in the story would be much more important, but it’s like she barely existed. All of the dialogue written for her is uneventful and borders on the idiotic. It’s like they were annoyed they even had to put a woman in the film. When Burns tells her he’s going away for a while for this job, she asked if it’s dangerous. Then, when he says that it’s a possibility, she has the audacity to ask “Then, why do it?”. Well, fuck Nancy. He’s a cop! He’s not an accountant! If a cop decided to exclude themselves from doing dangerous things, cities like New York would look more like a dumpster fire than it already is. Later on in the story, she doesn’t have much to say, even when they take a break. She just says they’re too distant and such, and they break it off for the time being. There’s just not enough detail for us to truly uncap what’s going on between them, despite how juicy these conversations have the potential of being. Honestly, we don’t even know how much time passes during this case. How long have they been drifting apart? How long has it been before Nancy noticed how distant Burns has become? How does this truly affect their relationship? They agree he’s had some issues, but nothing specific is talked about, so how do we know the details of their problems? Surely, she wants to ask what’s bothering him, so why doesn’t she? Why doesn’t she dig a little more? She just lets him stay in the state of moody and quiet and decides this is enough to call it? How much do you truly love Burns? You didn’t even try.
You would think when Steve Burns starts to become insecure and works out intensely and going back and forth to Nancy to fuck her aggressively to “prove himself” in a way, this would be pretty good fodder for Nancy to bring up in an argument to wonder what the hell is going on with him over the past couple of months. Why not bring it out into the open instead of moving to a break in the most uneventful way possible, despite this being such a pivotal moment in both of their private lives? What if she tried just a little bit harder in trying to understand him or figure him out by pointing out how he’s wearing leather a lot and how his behavior has been off? Then, we could see Burns freaking out over what she’s implying. It would be a big moment! What if she cared so much for his well-being that she followed him one night and maybe saw something she wasn’t a fan of? This would have been HUGE in giving the film more impact and depth, as well as a chance to take on some social commentary regarding the outside world’s response to the gay community at the time. Combining this with the serial killer and S&M stuff, it could have helped balance everything out much better than it was. Sadly, it seemed like Friedkin was just set on making this a violent crime thriller without truly uncovering the rest of the aspects of this world he wants us take notice of. This is why it was so controversial at the time of its release. Besides Ted Bailey, there weren’t any normal gay characters that came out of the narrative. It’s borderline exploitation because of how underdeveloped some parts are and how fixated it gets on stuff that shouldn’t have this much of a dedicated focus.
Sans for a few scenes where Burns shows he’s stressed out by sitting alone or just looking rough, we never get to know our main character as much as we’d like to. Because we don’t know enough about the real Steve Burns and the persona he overtakes of “John Forbes” while undercover, the final product comes off as too cryptic. It’s not just to throw us off with a twist ending because this can work if done right. It’s the lack of knowing ANYONE fully in the film that makes the ending so ambiguous. As a result, we leave the feature unsatisfied. We know the struggle Burns goes through regarding the explicit stuff he sees and the violence he encounters, especially when he got Skip Lee to get his ass kicked by the police when he was innocent, but the viewer is left on the outside in trying to figure out the other side of Burns. How far is he delving into this undercover lifestyle? Surely, he’s doing more than just walking into clubs and watching people. The question on everyone’s mind is if he’s partaking in the lifestyle whether it be because he’s enjoying himself or because he sees it as the only way to get deeper into his job. It’s hard to say. In the scenes where he’s by himself or talking to Edelson or Nancy, it seems like he’s not enjoying himself and it’s actually tearing him apart. However, in other scenes, we see him cruising in the park. One guy gives Burns the nod as he walks by, and he follows in a calm manner. What happened? No explanation is given, and we aren’t given a follow up to this. What is happening to Steve Burns? How is this mission affecting him personally besides his insecurity regarding his sexual orientation?
This constant ambiguousness is why the ending is affected so much because I feel like the answer is very clearly not the one that they are alluding to, though they are insisting it is. It doesn’t make sense though because the screenplay doesn’t give us enough of an inclination for it to be right. I don’t even know what they’re trying to say involving the triangle between Burns, Ted, and Gregory. Why does Burns get so agitated with Gregory to the point of almost fighting him? Is he really that defensive, or does he really resent Gregory that much for forcing Ted to get a job and pay his fucking rent, or is this scene implying that he’s closer to Ted than we think? Though Gregory seems to think so, it’s hard to say. However, if it wasn’t true, why does Burns flip out in the manner he does? We never know. The passion Pacino exudes in this scene, though well-acted, seems a little too intense regarding Gregory’s accusations unless there was more to it. However, if there was, the fate of all three characters makes even less sense, especially without a definitive explanation as to what was truly going on in Burns’s life. Also, it’s very clear that we’re supposed to like Ted Baily and hate his roommate Gregory, but does anyone else feel differently about this? I didn’t hate Ted, but the big moment where the characters start to show their disdain for Gregory is when Gregory lays down the law and tells Ted he has to get an actual job to cover the rent for now. Considering they are living in New York and Gregory has been covering the both of them for quite some time as Ted worked on his play, this isn’t an unreasonable request.
Friedkin also tries a bunch of different artistic choices that don’t work. After this one guy, who looks like Ben Stiller but sounds like The Big Show, gets stabbed to death in the park, there’s this weird filter thrown on the screen that looks like a computer graphic and it’s jarring to see because nothing else in the movie has a moment like it. If it was consistent with the rest of the killing scenes, you could pass it off as an aesthetic choice to represent the killer. However, to do it as a one-off, it looked strangely amateurish, especially because the person being killed wasn’t important to the story. It was just another random killing to show the killer doing his thing in a sequence that gave off “B-Level Horror Movie” vibes. Another bold choice was when Burns watches Stuart Richards go about his day. We know he’s following Richards and sits, watching him from a distance. We are also very aware of what Burns looks like at this point, especially during this montage. However, when he’s sitting on a fence, Burns is circled like a cartoon character and the rest of the screen is blacked out to show where he is sitting like we didn’t know who he was or something. This was such an odd choice that it actually makes you wonder what the editor was thinking in the grand scheme of things. The only time an artistic choice worked was when Burns started sniffing the speed-filled handkerchief and the screen got all hazy as he danced like a maniac. I really enjoyed the look of this sequence, as it perfectly captured the feeling and enhanced the look of the scene magnificently to explain what was going on in a small but eventful moment.
The laughable insight we get into the psyche of Stuart Richards took me out of the third act, with this strange scene where Richards has this vision of speaking to his deceased father and his father telling him that he knows what he has to do. If this man is schizophrenic, you have to show me just a little more to prove it. Randomly inserting this scene didn’t fit the tone of the film at all. If was way too “supernatural” in the way it was presented and came off as comical. Also, besides this scene, Richards seemed like a perfectly normal guy. If he’s supposed to be this crazy killer who’s piping and murdering dudes left and right, we need to see a little bit more of him in his private life interacting with people other than William Russ and showing more of his mental instability about to burst at the seams. Also, what is the significance of Richards keeping these letters to himself and never sending them? I got no clue.
*Though Top Gun still holds the title for sweatiest movie I’ve seen, Cruising finds itself in the top five. Apparently, the air conditioner seems to be broken in every gay club in New York, at least that’s what we’re led to believe.*
There are some parts that draw you in with its unexpectedness and though a lot of it disappoints, things heat up when Edelson is told that he has to wrap up his investigation by the DA due to public pressure. Watching this group of cops led by Burns royally fuck things up right after is hysterical. It starts with Burns cruising the wrong guy in Skip and them both getting arrested and interrogated, with Burns having to act like he’s not in on it. The chaos that ensues is hilarious because the cops overdo it to try and get answers out of Skip and to do so, they bring in this giant dude wearing a jock strap to slap Burns and Skip. It’s so outrageously unexpected that you can’t help but try and hold back laughter. When Skip finally yells, “Who is that guy?!”, I was cackling. After watching Ed O’Neil scream at Skip and telling him he has to jerk off so they can get a semen sample and do a subsequent “floating ball test”, the failure and disastrousness of this entire sequence is not lost on us nor the DA. It’s such a spectacular PR nightmare to show how clueless everyone is in this case because of how little is known about the killer and this world they are delving into. It’s the best scene of the whole movie in representing what they are up against. It’s not only the unknown, but it’s also the incompetence that’s supposed to represent the “good side”.
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
The ending completely lost me. They try to imply that either Burns is the killer or that he killed somebody, but this conclusion doesn’t make any sense. Burns doesn’t sound or look anything like the killer because we see enough of him even with the sunglasses and hat to know that Burns isn’t him. Stuart Richards is very clearly the main killer in question. Even when they meet up in the park, Richards reached for his knife and had the full intention of stabbing Burns first, so this puts Burns in the clear as far as the viewer is concerned. Burns singing the nursery rhyme in the climax isn’t a tell either. They were told ahead of time of the killer singing the exact lines of the rhyme, so maybe Burns just sang it to Richards as a way of saying he knows what’s going on. Plus, the killer in the opening sequence sang it and again, he neither sounded nor looked anything like Burns. The creepily low voice the killer has is too unforgettable for us to magically think this was somehow Burns. Then again, it doesn’t look or sound like Richards either, so who in the fuck was that guy? This is why the actual “twist” makes no sense at all. Burns was good friends with Ted Bailey, so there’s no way he would kill him. On the other hand, if they wanted to imply that Gregory was the killer and got away with it, that would make more sense. To say Burns is doing it doesn’t fit the character or any of the events that happened previously.
Okay, so he has the leather, the hat, and the sunglasses the killer had. Isn’t this a coincidence if anything? There was a good 75% of the S&M community he encountered dressed exactly like that. This doesn’t mean he’s a murderer.
He found all the same stuff in Stuart Richards’s closet too, along with the schizophrenic letters he wrote to his dead father. Now that is hard evidence. The actual killer was like a foot taller than Pacino, though this isn’t hard. If we are trying to imply Burns isn’t a killer, but he’s just into the S&M scene now or possibly gay, then this really isn’t the surprise the movie is trying to make it be. The fact that he’s back home with his girlfriend says he still loves her, so big deal! After analyzing all sides of it, I legitimately have no idea what the ending is trying to say. In my head, I was saying to myself, “Please don’t cut to the credits. Please don’t cut to the credits” just because the lack of explanation was too much. Sadly, that’s exactly what it did. It cut to the credits, and I have no idea what was meant by this ending. Burns stares directly into the camera, so we know something is bothering him, but we’ll actually never know. Friedkin never even told Pacino what the answer was! How insane is that? It seems to me that he didn’t know either, and he made the fucking movie!
Ridiculous.
Cruising is a decent thriller that succeeds in throwing Al Pacino in a world we have never seen a big-name actor go before, giving us a tension-filled tale of promises that imply something insane is about to happen. However, besides the initial shock value of seeing the griminess of this underground community, the screenplay falls short of the expectations it sets for itself, along with middling direction and a haphazard mix of ideas from William Friedkin that never fully translates to whatever the hell he wanted to say with the final product.
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