William Friedkin
Cruising

In New York, parts of men's bodies begin to be found in the waters of the Hudson River. The police believe it's the work of a serial killer who picks up homosexuals in city bars and then rapes and mutilates their bodies. Officer Steve Burns (Al Pacino) is sent undercover into the world of gay clubs to track down the killer...

Based on a novel by Gerald Walker, itself based on events that actually occurred in 1962 in Greenwich Village, "Cruising" is a very complex film, a thriller with very intense tones, almost horror, and with surprising psycho-sociological twists. From the unsettling opening scene, the viewer is immersed in an atmosphere of constant anxiety, a witness to a perhaps unknown world, made of latex, studs, fist-fucking, whips, and sweat, a dimension where there is no place for sentiment or indecision.

Harshly criticized by the public and snubbed by critics, Friedkin's work often hits hard with its rawness, so intense that it seems unreal, caricatured: it's no coincidence, in fact, that the filming was boycotted by the American homosexual community - it is said that some bar-goers continuously interrupted the crew to prevent the recording of direct sound or certain shots - who accused the film of excessive stereotypical imagery and the spread of homophobic and political messages ("we are everywhere" reads graffiti on a wall at the beginning of the movie).

Friedkin shows in this film too a great directorial skill, spare and raw, with some distinctive marks: even here, as in the previous "The Exorcist," he uses heavy subliminal messages more or less evident. In the murder scenes, in fact, the images of the knife slicing through bodies are interspersed with very fast frames of anal penetrations taken directly from vintage porn videos, to immerse the viewer more intensely in the dimension of the film.

Noteworthy is Al Pacino's performance, always on the edge of ambiguity (his look toward the camera with a leather hat is iconic), in a role that fully showcases his expressiveness. Most of the cast, selected directly from the patrons of the bars where the film is set, instill the right amount of realism, even if at times a bit over the top. Excellent and fitting soundtrack.

There are three versions of the film: the first, cut by a good 40 minutes, is the most widespread. Then there are two extended editions that do justice to the original work with a duration of 102' and the presence of scenes censored for over 20 years (essentially scenes set in the bars where Burns conducts his investigation).

In conclusion, an excellent gem of the thriller genre and GLBTG-themed cinema, as well as another milestone in W. Friedkin's filmography, often, unfortunately, remembered only for his contribution to the horror genre.