Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

Cruising Blu-ray Movie Review

Looking for Mr. Gay Bar.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 13, 2019

Maybe some of you have heard of a little film called The French Connection, and maybe some of you even know that there were two manifestly different looking Blu-ray releases of the film, each coming with the imprimatur of having been approved by director William Friedkin. That may serve to help elucidate a couple of points with regard to Cruising, the first of which is that Friedkin’s approval may or may not be the “blessing” that can at least sometimes accompany a director overseeing a high definition version of one of their properties. The second is that Friedkin seems to be an unabashed and unapologetic revisionist, and that tendency actually played into Cruising long before this potentially controversial Blu-ray release was ever a twinkle in its creator’s eye. Cruising encountered pretty significant pushback when it was released in 1980, much of it coming from a gay community that felt it was being maligned by the film, but there was pretty considerable grousing within the film’s cast and crew as well, much of it aimed squarely at Friedkin for changes he either made or refused to make (depending on whose anecdote you’re dealing with). That revisionism seems to have continued on unabated for this Blu-ray release, as will be outlined below.

Even I have my own issues with Cruising, despite the fact that I’m a boringly old fashioned, straight married guy living on the west coast, and that is with regard to the film’s kind of decrepit, sordid and even squalid take on lower Manhattan. That includes the West Village, a neighborhood my family lived in and owned quite a bit of property in for a couple of generations. The West Village has always frankly been kind of a quirky place (unashamedly so, it should be added), and it certainly has always had its fair share of gay folks (many will probably know that the legendary Christopher Street and the equally famous Stonewall Inn are part of the West Village). But there’s also a rather pronounced community ambience, or at least there was every time I visited my family there, with people greeting each other by name out on the street and a kind of camaraderie that admittedly existed beneath sometimes typically crusty New Yorker facades. That element is pretty much missing in action from Friedkin’s depiction of a relentlessly unseemly region where leather clad gay men on the hunt for a little “romance” end up getting hacked to death for their troubles, and where the police resort to bullying (and worse) tactics.

Community is actually explicitly mentioned in one of the two archival featurettes Arrow has included as supplements on this release, though several people associated with the film ironically say things along the lines of "the community" being split into factions with regard to the production. There were a lot of gay folks, many habitues either of the West Village or at least what is repeatedly referred to as "the leather bars", who signed up to be extras in the film and who remained vocal proponents during a very contentious shoot. But there were scores of other "community" members who vigorously demonstrated during the shoot, making lots of noise and even using reflectors to shine light on outside locations (upending the lighting regimen DP James Contner had devised), all because they felt the film was out to vilify gays. Friedkin states that while he understood where the "anti-Cruising" people were coming from, he never meant for the gay subculture to be anything other than an "unusual" backdrop for a murder mystery.

But it's here where Friedkin's revisionist tendencies may have gotten the better of him. The film's underlying plot conceit is that a straight cop named Steve Burns (Al Pacino) is sent undercover into "gay territory" to try to ferret out who has been serial killing gays. In both video and audio sleight of hand which is detailed in one of the archival featurettes, Friedkin actually kind of toys with the audience, utilizing actors who resemble each other, and in fact even using a "victim" from an early killing as the "perpetrator" in a later murder, and then dubbing all of the actors with the same voice, all of which adds up to some pretty willful misdirection which no doubt led some viewers to assuming who was doing all the killing. And yet Friedkin never really "solves" this whodunit, leaving things open to interpretation, something that further enraged some in "the community", since it seemed to be a blanket condemnation of gays in general.

Friedkin’s motives may have been relatively pure in making Cruising, but the result can’t help but feel exploitative at times, and that may be the biggest issue contemporary viewers will have with it. The fact that a variety of both cast and crew evidently had major problems with the film themselves is also probably testament to the fact that Cruising probably takes a few too many detours to ever arrive anywhere too convincingly. There are certainly provocative elements here, and some of Friedkin’s stylistic flourishes are fully on display (a couple of the death scenes kind of mimic Psycho), but the film never builds to a satisfying conclusion, evidently at least partly by design, or at least Friedkin’s fiat.

Cruising Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Cruising is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Arrow's insert booklet contains the following information on the restoration:

Cruising has been exclusively restored by Arrow Films and is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 with 5.1 sound. This new restoration was fully supervised and approved by director William Friedkin.

The original 35mm camera negative was scanned in 4K resolution at Warner Brothers/MPI.

Picture grading and image processing was supervised by William Friedkin and performed by Bryan McMahan at Roundabout Entertainment.

The 5.1 mix was supervised by William Friedkin and remastered by Aaron Levy at Smart Post Sound.

Picture restoration was completed at Silver Salt Restoration, London.

I'm frankly of at least two minds with regard to this transfer, and I'll start by saying that I haven't seen Cruising theatrically in at least a couple of decades, and I'm not one of those who insists my memory is 100% accurate in all things cinematic, but that said, I remembered at least parts of the film as being skewed more toward blue than they are here. There is plenty of blue throughout this presentation, as can probably be gleaned from some of the screenshots, but perhaps because the blues were so vivid they imprinted on my memory, making me think they were more prevalent than they are. That said, the best looking sequences here to my eyes are the brightly lit outdoor moments, where grading is rarely if ever used, but where primaries really pop extremely well, detail levels are excellent, and a fine grain field is easily discernable. Some of the darker material, including a lot of the blue tinted club scenes, can be a good deal murkier, with occasional crush and, in some of the darkest scenes, sudden spikes of grain that can tip toward noise territory. But one of the more curious things that struck my eyes is how variable the grain is throughout this presentation: at times, it looks really nicely organic, resolving without any issues, while at other times it's pretty chunky, and at still other times it's rather difficult to even see, giving selected moments a kind of digital, video-like appearance. I think the bottom line here is that it may be best (if objectionable to some) to simply state this is how Friedkin wants the film to look now, even if it's not exactly the way it looked then. Kind of interestingly, one of the interviews with cinematographer James Contner gets into how Contner wanted to shoot the film in black and white, and there are a couple of brief but striking high contrast black and white shots that start the film. My recommendation to fans is to carefully parse the screenshots I've uploaded with this review, preferably in full resolution, to see how they respond to the overall appearance.

Cruising Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Friedkin's revisionism perhaps contributed to the audio side of things on this release as well, since the film was evidently originally released in mono, while the two tracks on this disc are DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0. The surround track isn't overly showy, which is probably a good thing, but it does significantly open up a lot of the club material, as well as providing discrete channelization for individual ambient environmental effects. Background clatter from the urban environment can also dot the surround channels. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout, with no problems whatsoever.

Cruising Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The History of Cruising (720p; 21:05) is the first of two archival featurettes included on this release, both offering good interviews and background information. This one looks at the genesis of the project and the shoot.


• Exorcizing Cruising (720p; 22:31) is the second archival piece and features many of the same interview subjects (including Friedkin), here discussing the enormous controversy that greeted the film during the shoot and afterward.


• Original Trailer (1080p; 3:29)


• Audio Commentary with William Friedkin


• Audio Commentary with William Friedkin and Mark Kermode

Additionally, Arrow has provided its usually well appointed insert booklet.

Cruising Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Between Cruising and Looking For Mr. Goodbar, there seemed to be a pronounced cinematic suggestion that it might be best not to go club hopping and, you know, go to a movie or something. If one takes Friedkin at his word that the whole gay aspect to Cruising just gave him the opportunity to locate a murder mystery in a lesser known subculture, one might also understandably be apt to wonder why Friedkin didn't respect the "rules" of a murder mystery more observantly, and actually tie up more than a few loose ends. There are tons of rather interesting things scattered throughout Cruising, but it's also a disturbing film on a number of levels no matter what your sexual orientation or tolerance for other "lifestyles" may or may not be. My hunch is this may be another somewhat controversial transfer, but my bottom line is when this looks good, it often looks spectacular; I nonetheless have a pretty strong hunch some viewers may not react positively to some fairly wide variances that are on display. Fans of the film are getting a release with generally solid (if perhaps revisionist) technical merits, and the supplemental material is very interesting, for those considering a purchase.