Why did Pacino even wanna do this

“Cruising” is a gutsy film about a serial killer targeting homosexuals yet the distinction should be made it’s not exactly a gutsy look at the homosexual lifestyle. Garnering controversy when it was first released, the William Friedkin thriller wanted to open people’s eyes to a whole new subculture and present hate crime victims not normally focused on by Hollywood but the film is oddly lacking in strong characterization.

It focuses on a string of violent New York murders. Body parts have washed up on Long Island sound and even more men have been found brutally stabbed. It’s been discovered that these men frequented gay men’s clubs and Friedkin shows us one such chilling encounter early on with the killer, clad in leather and sunglasses, where both men head back to an apartment and the victim is playfully tied up before things get far less playful.

The hero of the film is Al Pacino’s Steve Burns, a patrolman assigned by his Captain (Paul Sorvino) to go undercover to try and suss out the killer. Right away the film seems somewhat vague on Burns. What makes him the best man for this job? Apparently he best matches the physical description of the other victims, but otherwise, he comes across as such a zonked out space cadet you wonder if the department even vetted him.

That this guy is expected to pass as flamboyantly gay is also a tough sell. He winds up trying to learn the culture- what the different colored bandannas in someone’s back pocket mean, what goes on under bridges in Central Park, and the whole night club scene, which is heavily into shirtless (and for some, pantless) dancing, drinking, and S&M themes like Precinct Night, where suspects are anally violated by others dressed as cops.


The film courted a lot of controversy when it came out because of such depictions, with it being argued that all of this is really just a small part of the gay community. There is another character in a film, a would-be playwright who seems more sympathetic as he befriends Steve, but he becomes only a small part of the film and becomes buried under a nightlife that seems way more preoccupied with sexual kinkiness than actual people.


That stands doubly true for the Pacino character, who remains an enigma. When he’s out in the bars he seems so sexually disinterested. We later see him in bed with a girlfriend (Karen Allen), where he again says very little, but I guess it’s supposed to show us he’s a straight arrow. Or is it? He’s so mysterious that nothing about him ever makes sense. When he later says the case is affecting him, it’s such a vague statement that even then we have no clue what’s happening. Are the murders taking it out of him? Or is it pretending to be gay?

Friedkin’s best work comes in the atmosphere- capturing a New York nightlife which is high on depravity but also knows those lonely city streets, secluded parks, and hidden-away alleys are dangerous. The visuals almost make up for the lameness of the actual murder investigation, which for the most part has Pacino going after suspects we already know are not the guy.

Odder still is one police interrogation scene where the cops not only have the wrong guy, but Friedkin comes up with a scene so hard to explain, so bizarre, and campy that it pushes the film into unintentionally funny territory. What’s with the black guy in only his drawers and a cowboy hat bitchslapping the suspect? Why are the cops making the suspect pull his pants down? Have we entered the Twilight Zone?

What Friedkin seems too obsessed with doing here is presenting gay culture as something “else”, something exotic, mysterious, and dangerous. Everytime two guys get to talking in a club, we’re supposed to make the connection that one of them may be a sexual psychopath ready to take things too far.

But what seems to hurt the story more than anything is Burns and for that matter Pacino. Rather than engage, he seems to be floating above everything trying not to be touched by it. We get few thoughts from him, even fewer insights into this brand new world he’s walking into. He conveys little and he seems to want even less out of it. It’s a performance makes you wonder why he even took the role to begin with? Much like the ending, Pacino here just presents one, large ambiguous question that’s never answered.