Bad Lieutenant Review
Is it possible to write a raving two-star review? With this bewildering chimera of a movie, Werner_Herzog has proven that he is incapable of making a boring film. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans succeeds brilliantly as failure, as Herzog and the terrifically inept Nicolas_Cage manipulate the conventions of the police genre for their own personal amusement, foregoing the standard tedium of inflated narrative tension and score-driven suspense in favor of moments of delirious dissonance and peculiar humor.
The film's relation to its predecessor, Abel_Ferrara's Bad_Lieutenant, is never quite clear, other than the presence of a police protagonist with a penchant for cheap sex, expensive drugs, and gambling on sports. Cage hobbles through the title role of Lieutenant Terence McDonagh like a crackhead Quasimodo, ingesting a chemical mélange of substances to stave off the pain of a chronic back injury as he tries to solve the brutal slaying of a Senegalese family in New Orleans. Cage visibly sheds charisma as the film progresses, devolving from a cocky showboat cop into a squawking dope who desperately projects false bravado and periodically erupts with awkward bursts of incoherent gibberish. Herzog gleefully feeds his scene-chewing star, adding to the already hallucinatory atmosphere of New Orleans with some incongruous iguanas, one alligator carcass, and the incomparable Brad_Dourif. Val_Kilmer makes an appearance, confirming rumors that he is still alive, and Eva_Mendes smolders quite adequately as McDonagh's requisite prostitute/girlfriend.
Herzog drives the preposterous plot off the rails early, and then begins discarding seemingly essential narrative elements like ballast from a sinking ship. For instance, while McDonagh is in the midst of a heated interrogation, trying to locate an elusive suspect, the wanted man simply walks into the police station and surrenders. Later, a key witness to the crime vanishes from McDonagh's custody, and is quickly forgotten. Herzog shreds the potboiler drama like wrapping paper, unveiling absurd little gifts like a twitching close-up of the aforementioned iguanas, an obnoxious arcade machine that mechanically chants, "Insert more coins! Insert more coins!" -- and 2009's most quotable movie line: "Shoot him again! His soul is still dancing." As the convoluted delta of assorted plotlines empty into a glimmering gulf of a finale, Herzog manages to skewer both the Hollywood happy ending and the Bush administration's response to Katrina. If Herzog's goal was to craft a compelling police drama, then he failed miserably, but if he intended to create a magnificent cinematic mess, then mission accomplished! Phillip Maher, Rovi
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