Bigelow's Mettle

We know what you're thinking: a beautiful woman in a police uniform is either a real cop or real kinky—and if she's smiling seductively, she's probably not a real cop. But there's a third possibility: Kathryn Bigelow, as it happens, is a movie director—a good one—and her third feature, Blue Steel, which opens later this fall, is about a rookie New York policewoman (played by Jamie Lee Curtis) who finds herself in love with a psycho-killer (Ron Silver). The movie doesn't work, but that's the fault of a preposterous screenplay. On its own terms, Bigelow's direction is elegant; her spooky spatial sense and her gunmetal lighting create a night-town New York we've never seen before. Nightscapes, in fact, are something of a Bigelow specialty. She started out as a painter, but the canvas couldn't contain her, and she soon wound up at Columbia University's graduate film program. Her first feature, The Loveless, starred the then unknown Willem Dafoe as the world's artiest biker, but it was her second, Near Dark, that caught cinephiles' eyes. Here was an allAmerican vampire movie that was at once harrowing and diabolically witty, a poignant, sexy chiller daubed in the most evocative shades of night-light. Blue Steel isn't up to that level, but it has its thrills—not least a scene in which Silver confesses he loves Curtis because he senses her lust to kill. Maybe Bigelow has a kinky streak after all.