Film Review with Robert Mann – Bad Lieutenant

19th June 2010

Bad Lieutenant ****

Another film to arrive in my cinema late – bad film distributor. Though Bad Lieutenant (or to quote its full title as released in the states The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans) shares its name with the 1992 film directed by Abel Ferrara and starring Harvey Keitel, and has been even been called a remake on several occasions, director Werner Herzog has made it clear that this film is not intended to be a remake of the 1992 film, Herzog never having even seen it. This is something that is reflected in the change of setting from New York to New Orleans and the somewhat different nature of the central character, although, remake or not, both this film and the 1992 one are clearly connected to the basic idea of following a drug addled and violent cop facing encounters with crime and sex. So, comparisons to the original are probably unfair and unjust (not a problem, I haven’t seen it yet anyway) and the film should be taken entirely on its own merits, of which it has plenty.

Terence McDonagh (Nicolas Cage) is a New Orleans police lieutenant with a reputation for courage. When he suffers an injury while rescuing a drowning man, McDonagh is forced to take prescription painkillers to keep himself functioning. Caught in a nightmarish downward spiral of addiction, McDonagh becomes a rogue detective, relentlessly devoted to scoring drugs while playing fast and loose with the law. Stalking his ruined city in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, McDonagh now thinks nothing of shaking down criminals for drugs and money. As his increasingly reckless behaviour leads him into the realm of a murderous gang boss, McDonagh’s life is complicated further by Frankie (Eva Mendes), a woman as compromised as he is. Can these two damaged souls find redemption together, or will the dark road they’re on lead only to death?

Bad Lieutenant manages to clearly distinguish itself from the many other cop movies that have been made over the years, with director Werner Herzog wisely avoiding all the clichés that plague the genre. Together with screenwriter William M. Finkelstein, he has made a film that, firstly, places the focus entirely on the central character rather than the case he is investigating, and, secondly, is based around a character that doesn’t conform to the much seen stereotypes that have become extremely repetitive. The central character here – one that cannot be described as either protagonist or antagonist, instead being somewhere in between – is not exactly a corrupt cop but he isn’t a good one either, being a very morally ambiguous individual, the kind of character whom we can both love and hate, cheer for and feel sorry for and still completely believe as a credible realistic anti-hero type person. Of course, none of this would count for much without the right actor but in Nicolas Cage they have the perfect person for the part. In recent years, Cage has often wasted his acting talents in films completely beneath him, where he was more a performer than a serious actor and many have begun to doubt his abilities as an actor as a result, but his performance here should set aside any doubts you may have. Following an impressive performance as Big Daddy in Kick-Ass, Cage is once again superb, delivering what is without a doubt one of his finest and most powerful performances to date. He plays the role with a fiery intensity, easily shifting between damaged and broken individual struggling with the physical pain of his injury while going about his increasingly difficult job and borderline psychotic madman whose drug addictions are starting to take over his life, and his natural on-screen charisma means that his performance is every bit as charming as it is convincing. We really can feel his character’s pain and completely believe the manner in which he descends into a complete psychopath at times. The supporting cast is also strong but it is Cage who the film truly belongs to. The film’ success isn’t entirely attributable to Cage, of course, but also to Herzog, whose low tech cinematography proves to be a great asset to this film, as opposed to the hindrance it can be in some cases. As the camera moves around the devastated post-Katrina New Orleans – which looks completely authentic and makes a great change from the much overseen locations of New York – the handheld shaky camera style creates a sense of raw realism, almost as if we are watching live footage, and helps to create a sense of the troubled environment in which the central character is living and working. Some of the low tech camera work could very well seem amateurish in the wrong hands but Herzog effectively and stylishly applies it in the hallucinations scenes to create a sense of the disorientation and confusion that the character is feeling. If the film is far from perfect, however, it’s because, for all its strengths, it is occasionally quite hard to watch, the plot doesn’t flow as well as it could and the final pay-off fails to be entirely satisfying. These are only minor gripes though and Bad Lieutenant is a film that is worth seeing for Nicolas Cage’s performance alone.

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Review by Robert Mann BA (Hons)

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