| Cruising (Deluxe Edition) | 
 enlarge | Director: William Friedkin
Actors: Al Pacino, Paul Sorvino, Karen Allen, Richard Cox, Don Scardino
Studio: Warner Home Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.97
Buy New: $11.60
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Avg. Customer Rating:  91 reviews
Sales Rank: 12388
Format: Ac-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 102
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: WARD116796D
UPC: 085391167969
EAN: 0085391167969
ASIN: B00005JO5L
Theatrical Release Date: February 8, 1980
Release Date: September 18, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 09/18/2007 Run time: 102 minutes
Amazon.com
Al Pacino hunts for a serial killer in a lurid world of gay leather bars in Cruising. Because of his resemblance to the victims of a series of slayings, cop Steve Burns (Pacino) goes undercover as a gay man, wandering through wild, gyrating bacchanalias straight out of a Tom of Finland painting, hoping that the killer will be drawn to his dark, tormented eyes. Cruising is a peculiar movie, a gritty police procedural that director William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist) tried to push into a quasi-metaphysical dimension with some casting tricks and subliminal images. Due to the controversy the movie sparked in the gay community, Friedkin goes to great lengths in the commentary and featurettes to defend the authenticity of the movie's sources (about a bizarre scene where a muscular black man wearing nothing but a jock strap and a cowboy hat appears out of nowhere and slaps a suspect being interrogated by the police, Friedkin claims this actually happened, though no context is offered). The movie passes no apparent judgment on the overtly sexual scenes in gay bars...yet clearly these scenes are expected to provoke unease in the viewer. Cruising is sure to provoke arguments: Is Pacino's performance vulnerable or tentative? Is the movie about homophobia or homophobic itself? What does the ending mean? Yet there's no denying it's claimed a place in cinematic history; far more people know about it than have seen it. For that--as well as the stylish cinematography--Cruising is worth seeing. --Bret Fetzer
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| Customer Reviews: Read 86 more reviews...
 I liked the movie September 17, 2008
Yeah...An ignorant person may assume that this movie represants ALL gays, and not just a small section. And to an even more ignorant person, it would correlant rough sex with murder and violence. But to people with half a brain, it is about a serial killer in an setting that most people don't find themselves in. Is that any different than a movie about a far away place or time, say the 1800's with Jack the Ripper, perhaps?
There are 2 reasons why I consider this a "great movie". 1) Movies are consider an "art form". And art is supposed create a reaction and stir up emotion. Ideally, even inspire behavior or action. This movie certainly does that. 2) Good art, or a good movie, should be provactive, and leave you thinking about it and feeling something about the people in it afterwards. And again, I think this movie does that. One is to wonder, "Did they get the right killer? If so, who killed the neighbor? Is that death just a sign that there will always be a new killer to go after? Or did Al Pacino's charactor kill him? If so, was it based out of his own frustrations of what he went through?" Also, I think the movie cannot help to make you wonder about a part of our culture that you may not have thought about before, and your own views about your own interests on some level.
Isn't that what art is supposed to do? Make you feel and think?
 A Pachino sleeper August 25, 2008
A Pachino movie thats not talked about to often. Disturbing and dark with a twisted ending.....buy it!
 Startling and apocalyptic. . . . August 6, 2008
Viewed now, with the benefit of more than 29 years hindsight, what's startling about William Friedkin's "Cruising" is its foreboding, apocalyptic (and apparently unintentional) pre-AIDS depiction of gay nightlife as it existed in the late 1970's. Though not by any means a masterpiece, "Cruising" is an intermittently fascinating study of an undercover cop (played by Al Pacino) investigation of a string of brutal murders of local gay men. Filmed in and around several gay bars and hard-core sex clubs located in the heart of New York City's Greenwich Village (with actual patrons--not only extras--and club life serving as the backdrop), the film was quite controversial at the time of its release. "Cruising prompted a good number of protests for the graphic, no-holds-barred nature of its subject matter and also for its sensationalism, with the potential to incite or increase violence against gays (this movie was made near the dawn of the "gay liberation" movement). "Cruising" is best seen for Pacino's stirring performance as the sexually ambivalent Steve Burns, who infiltrates the furtive gay underground scene and finds a powerful, addictive environment that has a menacing mixture of danger and gutter glamour.
Like "The Exorcist" and "The Boys in the Band" (both of which Friedkin directed), "Cruising" is often heavy-handed and it raises far more questions about sexuality, cultural identity and societal permissiveness than it answers. Yet the film still holds one's attention as it telescopes a specific cultural phenomenon circa 1979. As portrayed here, the gay scene is at once alluring and repugnant.
 A tribute to homophopic straights. July 16, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I saw Crusing in Chicago when it came out, and after its long enough run, the number of crimes against gays in and around the larger ghettos for gays increased substantially.
After I left the theatre with three other people, we got to our car and were chased for blocks in South Chicago by very mean looking people, who at red lights shouted epithets from the film. This happened, and Crusing initiated it.
If it were a work of art,with merit, opening up issues, then the incident I went through might have been understood as insane people doing insane things.
But Crusing is not art,and,it teaches hate and promotes physical violence toward gay people; and it is shocking that Friedkin, after Boys in the Band, could make such an anti gay film, and with such awful acting.
It was and still remains one of the more shameful portraits of gays as predatory, promiscuous, and homocidal.
Avoid this film.
 Great movie - terrible DVD-version...! June 7, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
"Cruising" is a great, underrated movie, no doubt about that. Gay cult-filmmaker Bruce LaBruce was right when he wrote that no other film depicts the S&M-scene in NYC better than that film...there is just one big problem with this Special-Edition-DVD: William Friedkin couldn't resist tinkering with the visual style of the film. For example, he changed the colours, so that each scene either has a heavy blue-ish or green-ish tone to it. That looks silly and disturbs the realistic atmosphere of the film. Even more disastrously, he added visual effects to Pacino's famous dancing scene - probably to heighten the feeling that Pacino's character is getting crazy. (As if we didn't know). The problem is: those stroboscope-effects look horribly cheap and totally take you out of the scene. The scene was the emotional highlight of the film. Now it is the lowpoint. Friedkin ruined his own film. What a shame.
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