With Blue Steel, Bigelow wrote and directed one of the rare contemporary police thrillers that can be read on another level—as a pointed questioning of whether the Hollywood action film, with its deep roots in misogynistic violence, can be used to critique itself. Jamie Lee Curtis stands out as a zealous rookie policewoman whose career choice poses an overt challenge to the patriarchal norm, a point provocatively made by Bigelow’s artful emphasis on the blatant phallocentrism of the policeman’s tools and trade. Frighteningly fast-paced and suspenseful, Blue Steel follows the increasingly disorienting cat-and-mouse game that suddenly unfolds between the novice cop and a vicious killer. For all of its intellectual sophistication, Blue Steel remains a viscerally charged experience, seething with palpable anger, sorrow and fear.