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Bookmark this pageBad 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
User reviews of this film
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- MissD said...
- Posted on Jun 04 2010 09:16 DO NOT WATCH IT !!!!! It is an utter waste of time...... so boring that it is very hard to stay till the end.....one of the worst movie i have ever seen
- Report as inappropriate
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
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