Alternate Best Actor 1980: Al Pacino in Cruising

Al Pacino did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Steve Burns in Cruising.

Cruising, that follow a cop going undercover to find a serial killer of gay men who frequent leather bars, isn't much of a film beyond its controversy from the time. It largely repetitive scenes of slasher film style murder scenes, followed by very routine investigation scenes, interspersed with scenes of our underdeveloped protagonist getting more entrenched into the "life". 

Al Pacino plays the part of the cop, and to be blunt, it isn't much of a part. The role of Steve Burns is a generalized description of this straight man cop, this as we find in his extremely simple relationship with his even more poorly defined girlfriend. These scenes are the most generalized possible in terms of a police officer's romantic life. Pacino is fine in them, in terms of creating the general sense of the weight on his mind within his expression as he speaks about his new secret assignment, but it is not much more than that. The successive scenes are as simple as we see just that weight get stronger, and nothing interesting comes of this even remotely. In the actual investigation scenes Pacino is again fine in creating this generalized dogged determination quality he's always good at conveying. Pacino knows how to deliver on that reserved intensity and it serves the general of this part well. The horrible poorly conceived center of this film is the character's Steve's second life at pretending to be a gay man looking for the serial killer. These scenes aren't particularly interesting, despite being so obviously exploitative in approach, particularly not for Pacino. Basically Pacino needs to play these two shades, one of the eyes still looking for clues and the killer, the other this very vague idea that Steve might be genuinely interested in what is going on around him. The latter element isn't at all developed, and feels awfully too much like Shock Corridor, where the man pretending to be insane went insane. This as both present the idea without actually effectively working towards it through the development within the scenario. With it all said and done, Pacino is absolutely fine in what it is that he is given. He does everything that is asked of him, maybe a little more, but sadly this is such an underwritten part that even someone of Pacino's talent can't make Steve a truly compelling character. Pacino is good, but there just really isn't anything there.