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Post by hi224 on Mar 27, 2019 8:26:32 GMT
any thoughts on this movie at all?.
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Post by pimpinainteasy on Mar 27, 2019 12:09:41 GMT
So was Cruising supposed to be a thriller? Or was it about one man's gradual "descent" into a subculture which is looked down upon by society and the police department that employs him? Friedkin has a tough job on hand - he is making a thriller, so the film needs the thrills and the twists. But he is also making a film about a cop who is gradually attracted to the lifestyle of the people he is spying on. Friedkin does not do a good job handling these two aspects of the film or stringing them together. In the end, Cruising is neither a great thriller not a great character study.
I really wanted to like this movie. I was waiting for the enthralling scenes where Pacino turned it on. But instead you have many scenes with Pacino casually walking into an underground gay bar and looking around at the debauchery going on around him. It is almost like Friedkin is saying - look, this is all so provocative. But the blatant scenes of debauchery leave you cold rather than shocked. Friedkin did such a great job gradually building up the changes in Regan's personality as she is taken over by Demon Pasusu in The Exorcist. But there is none of that ingenuity in Cruising. A bit of subtlety would have helped the movie. Instead, you are hit on the head with all the gay sex scenes. The hard rock music played during the scenes in the bar are cheesy. And so are the actors who play the gay men taking part in the debauchery.
Also, Pacino is introduced a good fifteen minutes into the film. We know nothing about him. Is he a conservative cop? Does he dislike gay people? We are told literally nothing about this character.
The scenes which indicate Pacino's increasing attraction to the S&M scenes are few and far between. They are quite flimsy as well. The ambiguous ending was a bit hard to believe. There is nothing that came before the ending that adds any weight to the ambiguity.
Sorvino and Pacino seemed to be sleepwalking through their roles. Pacino is really good in some of the scenes (like the one where is dancing with a patron at the bar. That was intense.). But he is nowhere as intense as he is in Serpico. The scene with Powers Boothe was quite funny. But another one where Pacino is told off by a patron at the bar came across as trite.
We do get a good look around New York. The film made me wonder what it would have been like to live in a great city like that in the 70s and 80s. A city that gave the opportunity to a man to become whatever he wanted to be.
Norman Mailer wrote (in Tough Guys Don't Dance) that people become cops to escape the criminal or deviant inside them. I guess Pacino's character in the movie confirms to this view.
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Post by hi224 on Mar 27, 2019 18:40:20 GMT
So was Cruising supposed to be a thriller? Or was it about one man's gradual "descent" into a subculture which is looked down upon by society and the police department that employs him? Friedkin has a tough job on hand - he is making a thriller, so the film needs the thrills and the twists. But he is also making a film about a cop who is gradually attracted to the lifestyle of the people he is spying on. Friedkin does not do a good job handling these two aspects of the film or stringing them together. In the end, Cruising is neither a great thriller not a great character study. I really wanted to like this movie. I was waiting for the enthralling scenes where Pacino turned it on. But instead you have many scenes with Pacino casually walking into an underground gay bar and looking around at the debauchery going on around him. It is almost like Friedkin is saying - look, this is all so provocative. But the blatant scenes of debauchery leave you cold rather than shocked. Friedkin did such a great job gradually building up the changes in Regan's personality as she is taken over by Demon Pasusu in The Exorcist. But there is none of that ingenuity in Cruising. A bit of subtlety would have helped the movie. Instead, you are hit on the head with all the gay sex scenes. The hard rock music played during the scenes in the bar are cheesy. And so are the actors who play the gay men taking part in the debauchery. Also, Pacino is introduced a good fifteen minutes into the film. We know nothing about him. Is he a conservative cop? Does he dislike gay people? We are told literally nothing about this character. The scenes which indicate Pacino's increasing attraction to the S&M scenes are few and far between. They are quite flimsy as well. The ambiguous ending was a bit hard to believe. There is nothing that came before the ending that adds any weight to the ambiguity. Sorvino and Pacino seemed to be sleepwalking through their roles. Pacino is really good in some of the scenes (like the one where is dancing with a patron at the bar. That was intense.). But he is nowhere as intense as he is in Serpico. The scene with Powers Boothe was quite funny. But another one where Pacino is told off by a patron at the bar came across as trite. We do get a good look around New York. The film made me wonder what it would have been like to live in a great city like that in the 70s and 80s. A city that gave the opportunity to a man to become whatever he wanted to be. Norman Mailer wrote (in Tough Guys Don't Dance) that people become cops to escape the criminal or deviant inside them. I guess Pacino's character in the movie confirms to this view. yeah, i mean I adversely felt Pacino's performance was sublime the way he illustrates a man whose slow descent into a certain subculture was fascinating but felt like it left out certain aspects of the plot which clued us in. realism is present(scene with buff black guy), Pacinos game, and the scenes presented feel very intangibly dark as well. Sidenote: most of the gay men in club scenes died of HIV not long after the movie was complete as well.
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Post by Lebowskidoo 🦞 on Mar 27, 2019 18:46:19 GMT
Imagine all the unsuspecting folks who rented what was marketed as just another serial killer thriller!   |
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Post by telegonus on Mar 28, 2019 7:51:25 GMT
I found Cruising spooky and downright scary; and it played, quite frankly, like a horror film. It was one of many films from its era (Seventies-early Eighties) to present the contemporary New York of that era as a kind of modern hell on earth. Director Friedkin really knew what he was doing. One can find some of that in much earlier films, such as The Incident (1967) and, in some of the 1968 Rosemary's Baby. Come the Seventies, it was everywhere on the big screen, from The Little Murders to Dog Day Afternoon. There's a good deal of that feeling in the 1971 Klute.
Cruising is really no holds barred. It felt downright apocalyptic. For my money, it out-Taxi Drivered Taxi Driver. The story felt nearer to real life to me, and without a moralizing tone. I didn't care at all for the earlier Scorsese film, which seemed always to be reaching for rather than truly achieving its goal, whatever it was. Cruising was a more brutal slice of life, and Al Pacino was truly up to the job, while De Niro never convinced me that he was the character he was playing; but then he was given some godawful dialogue.
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Post by petrolino on Mar 29, 2019 20:16:23 GMT
I like this movie.
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