Cruising movie review & film summary (1980) | Roger Ebert (2024)

There is a large, loud question right at the center of“Cruising,” and because the movie lacks the courage to answer it, what couldhave been a powerful film dissipates its force and leaves us feeling merelyconfused and annoyed. The question is: How does the hero of this film, anundercover New York policeman, ultimately really feel about the world ofhom*osexual sadomasoch*stic sex he is assigned to infiltrate?

Ishe touched by the sexual underground in an important way? Is his own sexualityinvolved? Is he intrigued by the aura of violence? The movie won’t say. And itsfailure to commit itself would be less annoying if it weren’t for the fact thatthe whole thrust of the movie is toward setting up those questions –which theending then leaves deliberately and confusingly unanswered.

“Cruising”is, of course, a film with a controversial history. It’s about a series ofviolent New York murders in which the victims all frequent clandestine Manhattannightclubs in which gay men gather to dance, drink and make pairings whileenveloped in an S&M atmosphere of leather, boots, whips and chains. Clubslike that thrive in all the big cities, and their promise of danger is usuallyjust atmosphere.

Butwhen director William Friedkin announced plans to set a movie in that milieu,and to film it as much as possible on location, the New York gay community roseup in protest. “Cruising,” they said, would present a distorted view of gaylife. It would imply the small subculture of S&M was more prevalent than itis, and that, if gays were “into” violence, attacks on them would somehow bejustified.

Thevalidity of these arguments is questionable and I plan to discuss them inanother article. For the purposes of this review, however, let it be said thatthe dramatic power of “Cruising” seems to have been very negatively affected bythe protests against the movie. There’s evidence here that key elements of AlPacino’s central role were altered or compromised so that Pacino’s owninvolvement in the events of the plot is deliberately left unclear. Since themovie is about his involvement – much more than it’s “about” the challenge ofsolving the killings – what we’re left with is a movie without the courage todeclare itself.

Pacinoplays Steve Burns, a young patrolman who's assigned to go undercover, enter thewaterfront world of S&M bars, and try to attract the man who has beenstabbing young men to death. Why Is he chosen? Because he matches a roughphysical description of the victims. Who is the Pacino character, and what's helike? The movie never really tells us: We learn so little about this guy wealmost suspect that important scenes have been left out. He does have agirlfriend, we learn, and his work in the gay bars seems to affect hisrelationship with her . . . but why? How?

Wedon't know, because he evades her questions with monosyllables. Is he bisexualhimself? Again, we can't say, and the movie is so annoyingly unclear aboutwhether he actually engages in sex with the men he meets in the bars that it'sa cop-out. Whether he does or doesn't have gay sex Is central to this story'and the movie makes that obvious, and yet Friedkin looks the other way atcrucial moments. Is he afraid to offend anybody? Then why choose this subject?

Themurder investigation itself Is complicated enough on the surface. but carefulthought after the movie will reveal that the plot structure is basically amess. That isn't supposed to matter, I think, because the movie is reallysupposed to be about Pacino's progressive involvement with the S&Msubculture. And there is some implied evidence that by the end of the moviePacino is moving toward a gay orientation and does not find S&M all thatunspeakably out of the question.

Sincethe movie fudges on that too, though, we're finally left in a state ofexasperation. And the movie's final scene-Pacino's girlfriend puts on hisleathers and clanks toward him as the screen fades to black-is a complete redherring. Amazing.

Here'sa movie that's well visualized, that does a riveting job of exploring anauthentic subculture, that has a fairly high level of genuine suspense frombeginning to end. . and that then seems to make a conscious decision not todeclare itself on its central subject. What does Friedkin finally think hismovie is about?