BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS Review:
- Make no mistake: Bad Lieutenant will likely become a near-instant cult-classic. Werner Herzog's latest will go down as one of the all-time crazy-ass movies, a totally insane film that you have to see to believe. It's also a movie that somewhat walks a fine line. If this were any other director working with this material, you might have ended up with a movie trying to be a great "bad" movie, only to end up as just plain "bad." But this is Herzog, and as the movie goes on, you start to realize that there is in fact a sort of demented genius at the core of Bad Lieutenant. There are the surface elements of a "bad" movie. Over-acting, out-of-nowhere plot twists, a half-baked crime story ... but when it comes to all of Bad Lieutenant's craziness ... Herzog, I think, knows exactly what he's doing. There is a method behind the madness. Most of the time. However you slice it, the fact is that Bad Lieutenant is a highly entertaining, ultra-insane flick that's a must-see for those like their movies with a slice of crazy on the side.
In some ways, Bad Lieutenant is a modern film noir - a detective story about a corrupt cop who lives in a world of sex, drugs, and crime, where everything is very much painted in shades of grey. The post-Katrina, New Orleans setting is really there to add to the movie's murky, hazy atmosphere. It's a movie about broken people, so it makes sense that it takes place in a broken city.
Our lead is, of course, played by Nicholas Cage. Cage, as we all know, is most at-home when he has the freedom to "let the hog loose" (as Herzog has put it in interviews), and imbue his characters with his natural tendency towards over-the-top eccentricity. Cage can be frustrating when he is inexplicably cast in typical leading-man type roles. The weirdness of Cage is typically a horrible fit for movies where that strangeness is boxed-in. But when he's free to let loose - think Raising Arizona, Adaptation, and now here - well, crazy Cage matched with a crazy script can often lead to crazy-good results. In this movie, Cage isn't holding anything back. His character, riddled with back problems, is hunched-over, bug-eyed, and constantly seems to be on the verge of a complete psychotic break. His voice changes depending on how drug-addled he is at any given moment. He's a loose cannon, and he's one messed-up dude.
It says something about Cage's performance here that he completely overshadows the rest of the cast, which includes guys like Val Kilmer and ladies like Eva Mendes. Both of them are pretty good in their roles - Mendes in particular is the most watchable she's been in a while. Rapper Xzibit does a pretty good job as gang leader Big Fate, and Brad Dourif (Lord of the Rings) has an unusually low-key role as Cage's bookie. But ... this is Cage's movie, no question. Virtually all of the movie's most memorable scenes are due to Cage doing or saying something so over-the-top, so unexpected, that you have to laugh, wonder what the hell you just witnessed, and/or turn to your friends and exchange looks of shocked amazement.
And yes, Cage's drug-fueled journey in Bad Lieutenant has many such moments of bat$#&% insanity that will surely be referenced and quoted for many moons. "His soul is still dancing." "You don't have a lucky crack pipe?", and many, many more. One scene, in which Cage interrogates a young couple by actually ... well, no, I don't want to spoil it. You have to see it to believe it. Suffice it to say, you won't know whether to laugh, cry, or cringe. And how about the scene where Cage throws down with a couple of old women at a senior center? Wow, just wow. And how about the fact that Herzog throws in random iguana-cam shots? Yes, iguana-cam. WTF, indeed.
And I guess that's the knock on a movie like this. When the movie isn't at its bat$%#&-crazy best, you find yourself kind of getting a little bored and just waiting for the next crazy moment to happen. And sometimes, you do start to wonder: how good is a movie, really, if it's basically just a collection of scenes in which Nicholas Cage goes unhinged? I think that, in the end, there is, as I said, a method to the madness. This movie, despite its weirdness, never 100% rises above the material its riffing on, the way, say, a Mulholland Drive does. It can be an odd mix, because so much of the movie is played for laughs, and yet you're never quite sure how much of the movie is meant as comedy. Sometimes, Herzog pulls back the curtain just enough to let us know that he's in on the joke. Other times, you're not so sure.
Still, you always feel like in his own eccentric way, Herzog knows what he's doing - and he crafts a movie that is ultimately a kind of twisted ode to being bad. Cage does everything wrong, sinks increasingly lower into a pit of moral depravity, and yet, somehow, comes out on top. It's a darkly funny twist on the usual Hollywood formula, and this is, I think, a movie that has something to say beyond just being weird for the sake of being weird. But it's that same unapologetic weirdness that makes Bad Lieutenant, despite occasional unevenness, one of the most interesting and memorable movies you'll see this year.
My Grade: B+
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