Directed by Werner Herzog
|
Bad Lieutenant Tell
me first why Abel Ferarra’s 1992 film
“Bad Lieutenant” needed to be remade. It was a very strange but in fact a
one-of-a-kind masterpiece; did you know that Martin Scorsese called it one of
the best films of the 1990s?, and it was – a brutal, take-no-prisoners
account of a New York City cop who does everything bad – drugs, phony
arrests, thefts, near-rapes – and yet is somehow good inside. Now
another great filmmaker, Werner Herzog, a man who’s known here for such
early films as “Aguirre, The Wrath of God,” and his last one, a
documentary called “Encounters at the End of the World,” has
remade “Bad Lieutenant,” calling it “Bad Lieutenant: Port
of Call: New Orleans.”
It’s about a, well, a bad Lieutenant, only this time in the New
Orleans police force. And
he’s as bad as Abel Ferarra’s
lieutenant ever was. He’s
played by Nicholas Cage, and he’s got a cocaine habit, he deliberately
makes bad arrests of a couple on the street, so he can get sex from the
girlfriend, his own girlfriend is a hooker (played by Eva Mendes) and did I
say he’s also got a bad gambling habit? Well, he does, and he’s into his
bookie for $5,000. And
that’s just for two weeks’ worth of bets. And
now a drug kingpin is after him and his girl as well. So he brings her to his alcoholic
father’s old house outside of town, to stash her where the drug lord
can’t find her. Okay,
enough about the plot, which I’ve barely hinted at. Who would have thought the Werner
Herzog could make a crime film, or that he even wanted to? But he has, and he obviously knows
just how to do it. The atmosphere
is cloudy and ominous, the events are scary, almost
everything is right except for Nicholas Cage as the Lieutenant. Maybe it’s me, but I don’t
think Cage is a good actor – I’ll make one exception, though, and
that’s for “Moonstruck,” but there he had Cher to play off
of. I’ve always felt that
Cage acted from the outside in.
Here he has a bad back, which we know because he lists slightly to
that side, except when he forgets to do it. He also doesn’t know how
to hold back and let us in the audience feel his emotions; he’s forever
letting us see that he’s frantic, high on drugs, or trying to steal
from the evidence room of police headquarters. After a short time, we are more than
fed up with his histrionics, which just intrude on the story of the
film. “Bad Lieutenant: Port
of Call: New Orleans” is a film that |