Cop Vs. Creep

By RICHARD CORLISS

BLUE STEEL

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

Screenplay by Kathryn Bigelow and Eric Red

Wit always plays on Jamie Lee Curtis' fine lips. So when, as rookie cop Megan Turner, she is asked why a pretty, peaceable woman would care to be a New York City police officer, Curtis smiles as she replies, "I wanted to shoot people." Since Blue Steel is a weave of police story and lady-in- distress melodrama, she will eventually get that opportunity. Her target will be Eugene Hunt (Ron Silver), a Wall Street commodities trader whose romantic intensity fascinates Megan at first, before she realizes he is a psychopath. He murders at random and for pleasure; after a kill, he swathes his torso in the blood from his latest victim's sweater. "Death is the greatest kick of all," he confides to Megan. "That's why they save it for last."

Director Kathryn Bigelow is Hollywood's suavest young stylist. Trained as a painter, she brings glamour, precision and thrill to every image. This film, bound as it is by action-movie conventions, hasn't the originality of her stunning horror drama Near Dark, and toward the end Blue Steel spins goofily off track. But it has a handsome time getting there, propelled by Curtis' sensible sensuality and Silver's bravura creepiness. These two help dramatize the danger any woman can find in the desperate intimacy of a big city. By the climax, Megan has to be thinking of Eugene and every other urban brute when she is again asked, "So what made you become a cop?"

"Him."