What I Watched, What You Watched: Installment #148

I’m interviewing William Friedkin this afternoon so I figured I would check out at least one film of his I had not seen yet and Cruising starring Al Pacino was the only one on Netflix Instant that fit the description. Here Pacino stars as a beat cop asked to go undercover in the underground gay subculture of New York City to catch a killer with an M.O. for killing gay men with S&M tactics. There’s a lot of man flesh here and also a lot of actors here looking very, very young.

First, of course, there is Pacino, but Paul Sorvino looks quite young playing his captain, but the bigger surprises are the characters in smaller roles such as Powers Boothe as a store clerk whom I’m surprised I recognized, Ed O’Neil as a detective and James Remar in a role I won’t describe here, but he looks here unlike any picture of Remar you have in your head.

Overall, the film was decent and benefits greatly from a pretty solid ending, something I continue to notice is really Friedkin’s biggest asset. He shows a lot of respect for his film’s endings as they frequently give you one more thing to think about, if not change your impression of the whole film entirely.

Season five begins tonight and HBO sent me screeners of the first few episodes of the season, but I still hadn’t finished watching the Blu-ray of season four so over the last week I remedied the situation and watched the final six episodes of the prior season, a season that started off really poorly, but really nailed it down the homestretch. The final four episodes of season four are some of the best the series has had to offer and the season finale has got to have major fans chomping at the bit for tonight’s premiere. I know I can’t wait to see what happens.