Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans Review Rick Mele - AskMen.com go to original
Bad Lieutenant 2009 Theatrical Trailer - Official Site: BadLieutenantPortOfCallNewOrleans.com - Release Date: November 20, 2009 - Director: Werner Herzog - Main Actors: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Xzibit, Val Kilmer
In Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Nicolas Cage plays Terence McDonagh, a high-functioning addict who patrols the streets of post-Katrina New Orleans. After an act of heroism earns him a promotion to lieutenant and a lifetime of excruciating back pain, McDonagh is put in charge of investigating the murder of a Senegalese immigrant family. The trail leads him to a local drug kingpin (Xzibit), but things quickly spiral out of control for Terence as he attempts to juggle his drug and gambling addictions with his professional responsibilities and protecting his prostitute girlfriend (Eva Mendes). Eccentric and darkly comic, Bad Lieutenant just might be the weirdest movie Nicolas Cage has ever made - intentionally, that is. Despite being commonly referred to as a remake, the only thing Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant and Abel Ferrara’s 1992 cult film have in common is their titles, along with a title character whose constant drug use and bad behavior complicates his job of enforcing the law. Herzog and screenwriter William M. Finkelstein, whose credits are dominated by procedural dramas and cop shows, take aim at subverting the crime genre; nowhere is this more apparent then the movie’s ending, a clever tongue-in-cheek nod to the TV cops whose cases all wrap up neatly with a nice little bow. And while each National Treasure movie and interchangeable high-concept action thriller he does distances Cage further and further from his former reputation as a serious actor, every once in a while the one-time Oscar-winner turns in a performance like this. One that reminds you that underneath all the Disney films there’s a compelling actor, one that’s capable of carrying a film or taking a chance on a role. The more unhinged Cage’s Lt. McDonagh becomes, the more the movie clicks, and despite a distractingly inconsistent accent, his manic outbursts are worth the price of admission alone. Still, Bad Lieutenant can frustrate at times, with promising characters like Val Kilmer’s detective dropping in and out of the movie; it would be maddening if Cage wasn’t such a blast to watch on his own. A movie that ultimately has more cult than mass appeal, how much you enjoy Bad Lieutenant will probably come down to how much you like Werner Herzog rather than Nicolas Cage. A notoriously eccentric director, his latest film is nowhere near as mainstream as his last foray into fiction, Rescue Dawn. With its trippy handheld shots of iguanas and gators, a lot of Bad Lieutenant doesn’t quite make sense and isn’t supposed to - this is Herzog’s impressionistic version of a cop drama, and if the sound of that doesn’t appeal to you, the movie isn’t going to be worth your time. Still, the combination of Herzog and an unleashed Cage all but ensures Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans a future as a cult film, and it’s eminently more watchable than some of Werner’s earlier offerings (though not quite as fascinatingly bizarre). Consider it a film major’s cop movie, with Eva Mendes for some eye candy. Like Cage’s titular bad lieutenant, the movie Herzog’s given us is completely off-kilter, but even if the going gets dicey at times, it still somehow manages to get the job done.
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Entertainment | November 2009 
Rick Mele - AskMen.com
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