Cruising

"It's a lurid, twisted film that brings you into its world and completely works you over."

"Opening with some powerful moments, Cruising soon drifts into bloody Village People-type caricature."

"The psychosexual dynamic of Cruising is certainly questionable - deliberately so, to some extent - though in chalking up violent homoerotic impulses to unresolved daddy issues, the movie may be a greater insult to the intelligence of psychoanalysts than to the sensibilities of (the gay community)."

"Viewed from almost three decades' distance, Cruising now looks like a masterly work of psychological disorientation, guilty only of a certain insensitivity - in putting the most extreme imaginable example of gay sexual subculture into a mainstream film - but innocent of any homophobic intention."

"Its gamy images inside the leather and S&M gay bars along the Greenwich Village waterfront are both busy and dark."

"Taking away the kissing, caressing and a few bloody killings, Friedkin has no story..."

"The follow-through's pretty weak, trailing off into some artsy ambiguity that damaged the film's commercial chances."

"This detective melodrama has something to offend almost everyone."

"What we're left with is a movie without the courage to declare itself."

"William Friedkin's Cruising is a work of art."

"Cruising does not demonise homosexuality in general... rather it exposes the contradictions and potential dangers of any self-loathing gay man who turns his internalised homophobia violently upon himself and his own."