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Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)

Director: Werner Herzog

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From Time Out London

Reviewed at the Venice Film Festival 2009

Did you hear the one about the German maverick who signed on to remake a notorious existential American policier and turned it into a stuffy, if pleasingly ridiculous b-picture? Werner Herzog’s curious take on Abel Ferrara’s ‘Bad Lieutenant’ received its premiere at the Venice Film Festival this morning, and as the curtains came down, there was the faint sound of booing to be heard amid the polite, cricket match-style applause.

It’s certainly not a terrible film, but you get the sense that were Herzog’s (currently invulnerable) name not attached, it would have been prime grist for the straight-to-DVD mill. Fragments and motifs from Ferrara’s original (which Herzog wryly stated he had not seen) remain, but for the most part, this is a much more conventional thriller: imagine a watered-down ‘Aguirre: Wrath of God’ meets Antoine Fuqua’s ‘Training Day’. Gone are the sharp pangs of Catholic despair and the lengthy scenes of Harvey Keitel naked and weeping in front of a mirror. In their place, we have Nicolas Cage cackling maniacally, boasting about his ‘lucky crack pipe’ and experiencing narcotic hallucinations of iguanas and…breakdancers? Redemption is strictly off the menu.

We open on Cage’s trivially crooked but essentially good-natured detective, Terrence McDonough, injuring himself while saving a Latino felon trapped inside some kind of bizarre underwater cage. Six months later, he’s been promoted to Lieutenant and is indulging in white powder pick-me-ups as he goes about his rounds. He’s assigned to find the man who murdered five Senegalese illegal immigrants, and while he initially takes to the task with violent gusto, he soon becomes more interested in how he’s going to pay his gambling debts, tend to the prostitute he’s pimping (Eva Mendes in an extremely thankless role) and sneak drugs out of the police property room.

The build-up is slow and stiff. The affected, generic cop patter and humdrum camerawork are of the sort found in any trashy TV police procedural. Even the potentially rich political subtext of setting the film in post-Katrina New Orleans feels fumbled. The film only moves into the realms of eccentric brilliance on one occasion, in which a frazzled, three-day-bender Cage forces a nurse to talk by pulling the breathing tube from her elderly female patient's nose while screaming, ‘I should kill you both, you fucks!’, and claiming that they’re ‘the reason why this country is going down the drain’. Both women are agog. So, I imagine, were much of the audience.

Though ill-served by a simplistic storyline, Cage’s character does (just about) deserve to join the long and distinguished line of narcissistic and self-destructive Herzogian anti-heroes. He delivers an enjoyably barmy performance, spending the entire film in a billowy beige suit with a huge gun tucked brazenly down the front of his trousers. You could almost imagine Klaus Kinski playing him back in the day, but this new ‘Bad Lieutenant’ doesn’t contain the wit, insight or innovation you expect from Herzog. The occasional shot of ambiguity is injected into the mix – scenes we’re not quite sure are real or in Cage’s mind – but the remainder of the film is so unadventurous and unmemorable that it doesn’t endear itself either intellectually or emotionally. And as Cage films go, this is one to file next to ‘Vampire’s Kiss’ rather than ‘Leaving Las Vegas’.

Author: David Jenkins 2009-09-04 12:01:02

Time Out London Venice Film Festival 2009

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User reviews of this film

Assad said...

Posted on Oct 24 2009 16:23 I just watched this at London Film Fest & went in expecting to hate it as I loved the original. But I have to say the film is excellent, certainly Cage's best film & performance since Leaving Las Vegas. Herzog has doen a brilliant job & the film stands on it's own, apart from the Ferrara film. I look fwd to watching it again when it releases and getting the dvd!!

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