***SPOILERS*** With the Democratic Convention coming to New York City a rash of murders of local gay New Yorkers has put the NYPD on the case in a very big way. From the mayor on down every city official wants the politically explosive murders stopped, and solved, as soon as possible. NYPD Detective Captain Edelson, Paul Sorvino,gets local patrol cop Steve Berns, Al Pacino,to go undercover in the gay community to help find and arrest the killer before he kills again. At the same time Burns is very uncomfortable with his new and secret assignment. Not having any idea of the local gay lifestyle Burns feels it would alienate him from his live-in girlfriend Nancy Gates, Karen Allen, but he really has no choice in the matter.
The movie "Cruising" has some of the most graphic scenes ever, in a major studio released motion picture, about the heavy leather and S&M gay world. Those scenes are peppered into the movie in almost every other sequence to the point that it almost loses it's story about a gay serial killer on the lose.
Burns taking the name John Forbes and moving into a West Village apartment tries to get familiarized with the clubs and bars that the killer frequents to find new victims in his bloody rampage against gays. Even with a strong police presence the killer goes on his way killing gays but now he's being tracked by the undercover Steve Burns aka John Forbes who got a good idea to who he is.
It turns out that the killer Stuart Richards, Richard Cox, is an art student at Columbia University. Stuart's first victim was a professor Vincent who's class he attended. Officer Burns realized that Stuart was seen at the local gay bars in the village were a number of the killers victims were picked up and later murdered. The very fact that Stuart was also a student of the murdered Prof. Vincent, who was also gay, was just too much of a coincidence to be overlooked.
Breaking into Stuart's apartment on the Columbia Collage campus Burns finds a number of leather jackets and caps hidden in his closet. The clothes match the ones that Burns saw the person who looked a lot like Stuart at a number West Village gay bars and clubs. There's also a box-full of letters written by Stuart to his father, who's been dead for ten years, begging his forgiveness for not being the man that he always wanted him to be.
The movie ends on a confusing note where we don't exactly know if Stuart is really the killer or not. Ever more surprising it's not made clear if someone else had taken up Stuarts cause or "crusade" against New York's gay community. Since a number of murders, including Burns' next door gay neighbor Ted (Don Scardino), happen after Stuart was already taken into custody. You don't know for sure but it seems as if the now very troubled and confused, about his own sexuality, Officer Burns had lost his bearing and went off the deep end. Burns may have began murdering gays like the killer he was assigned to capture!
As the movie ends we see Capt. Edelson investigating Ted's murder and then pulls back in a white fright, this was the first time in the movie that he showed any real or genuine emotions at all, when he finds out who possibly may have murdered him! Edelson finds that Officer Burns, using the name John Forbes, was living in the next door apartment at the time of Ted's murder!
Did Edelson at that point realize that in what he did in trying to find and apprehend the gay serial killer he unknowingly created an even bigger Frankenstein Monster! A monster Which he and his bosses in the NYPD would have to answer for in the very near future.
The movie "Cruising" has some of the most graphic scenes ever, in a major studio released motion picture, about the heavy leather and S&M gay world. Those scenes are peppered into the movie in almost every other sequence to the point that it almost loses it's story about a gay serial killer on the lose.
Burns taking the name John Forbes and moving into a West Village apartment tries to get familiarized with the clubs and bars that the killer frequents to find new victims in his bloody rampage against gays. Even with a strong police presence the killer goes on his way killing gays but now he's being tracked by the undercover Steve Burns aka John Forbes who got a good idea to who he is.
It turns out that the killer Stuart Richards, Richard Cox, is an art student at Columbia University. Stuart's first victim was a professor Vincent who's class he attended. Officer Burns realized that Stuart was seen at the local gay bars in the village were a number of the killers victims were picked up and later murdered. The very fact that Stuart was also a student of the murdered Prof. Vincent, who was also gay, was just too much of a coincidence to be overlooked.
Breaking into Stuart's apartment on the Columbia Collage campus Burns finds a number of leather jackets and caps hidden in his closet. The clothes match the ones that Burns saw the person who looked a lot like Stuart at a number West Village gay bars and clubs. There's also a box-full of letters written by Stuart to his father, who's been dead for ten years, begging his forgiveness for not being the man that he always wanted him to be.
The movie ends on a confusing note where we don't exactly know if Stuart is really the killer or not. Ever more surprising it's not made clear if someone else had taken up Stuarts cause or "crusade" against New York's gay community. Since a number of murders, including Burns' next door gay neighbor Ted (Don Scardino), happen after Stuart was already taken into custody. You don't know for sure but it seems as if the now very troubled and confused, about his own sexuality, Officer Burns had lost his bearing and went off the deep end. Burns may have began murdering gays like the killer he was assigned to capture!
As the movie ends we see Capt. Edelson investigating Ted's murder and then pulls back in a white fright, this was the first time in the movie that he showed any real or genuine emotions at all, when he finds out who possibly may have murdered him! Edelson finds that Officer Burns, using the name John Forbes, was living in the next door apartment at the time of Ted's murder!
Did Edelson at that point realize that in what he did in trying to find and apprehend the gay serial killer he unknowingly created an even bigger Frankenstein Monster! A monster Which he and his bosses in the NYPD would have to answer for in the very near future.