Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
Bad Lieutenant (1992)
Director: Abel Ferrara
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Keitel is the depraved and corrupt New York cop of the title. Hooked on crack, heroin and alcohol, he's up to his eyeballs in debt and staking his life on the Dodgers - and they're starting to lose. Perversely, the appalling rape of a nun proffers salvation: a $50,000 reward to find the perpetrator. The film isn't so much a thriller as a slice of (low-) life. The script is cut to the bone, the set-ups have a vérité feel, while the editing mimics real time in long, nearly unwatchable sequences in which Keitel shoots up, or masturbates before two teenage girls. Ferrara allows his star to dictate the pace, and is rewarded with a performance of extraordinary, terrifying honesty. This is an actor laying himself bare before the camera/confessor. Astonishingly, Ferrara ups the ante. Out of degradation, he pulls redemption. It is a jarring stroke, and will divide audiences who have stayed with the film this far. It seems to me that Ferrara is an artist of the profane; his Catholicism looks suspiciously like a Scorsese hand-me-down. In this exploitation/art movie, it may just be that the truth is in the sleaze.Author: TCh
Cast & crew
Director: Abel Ferrara
Producer: Edward R Pressman, Mary Kane
Cast: Harvey Keitel, Victor Argo, Anthony Ruggiero, Robin Burrows, Frankie Thorn, Victoria Bastel, Zoe Lund full cast
Duration: 96 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.
What do you think?
Post your review now