Review of Cruising (1980) by Wayne D — 14 Dec 2008

In 1970, Freidkin took a chance and directed an off Broadway film entitled "The Boys In The Band" which had it's issues in it's depiction of the gay community but for it's time was really one of the first Hollywood films to openly deal with homosexuality.

It was a questionable step forward. Ten years later, Friedkin revisited the NY gay community by adapting the book by Gerald Walker loosely based on a series of killings of gay men in the mid 1970s. Past the controversy that erupted during and after the film Cruising does remain as a vivid portrait of NYC pre-AIDS hardcore gay community.

It is well shot but invariably ugly and mean, an unforgiving film in it's depiction of that gay lifestyle and Friedkin (The Exocist, French Connection) does not shy when filming those elements. Where the film does fail is in the construction of it's lead played by Al Pacino.

We don't understand his motives and what the film eludes to (his possible homosexuality and sadomasochism) is glossed over and that is way too important in the story to shy away from in it's execution.

I do appreciate the enigma of the killer's identity for it's device as a thriller, that suggests something psychologically grand but that device's connection to the mental makeup Pacino's undercover cop is too vague and in the ending a weak out for Friedkin.

A film that needs to be seen but is too flawed to put in the pantheon of Friedkin's finest work.