Every Kathryn Bigelow Film Ranked From Worst To Best

Sandwiched between Bigelow's stone-cold cult classic (Near Dark) and her major breakthrough in Hollywood (Point Break), this production remains largely forgotten during a championed period.

Jamie Lee Curtis plays a newly appointed police officer, who on her first night on duty, guns down an armed robber. She becomes an ongoing obsession by a witness to the scene, a disturbed Wall Street Broker (Ron Silver).

Curtis is fantastic in the main role, endlessly warm and charismatic, but also believably tough yet vulnerable. It’s a character we immediately attach to and continuously root for, even when the film sometimes sporadically lop-sides her arc, along with the plot.

Silver on the other hand is less able to gloss over his characters flaws; his journey from mild-manner executive, to charming mystery man, to full blown psychopath, never really join its dots in a successful way.

There are hints at a more complex story, discussing the dark psychological relations to sex and violence yet it's left in the dust as film's logic careens into simple thrills. Regardless, Bigelow’s professional sheen makes up for it, with a slickly placed together and moodily shot film.

So by the third act, as Curtis and Silver combat in a glorious slow-motion shoot-out across the streets of New York, your pulse will be too busy racing instead of concerned with the several stumbling blocks it took to get there.