Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call – New Orleans
Abel Ferrara’s 1992 film Bad Lieutenant quickly achieved a cultish reverence amongst film fans that prefer their cinema somewhat darker and more degenerate than your average multiplex fare, the images of a ravenous Harvey Keitel prowling a stygian Manhattan immutably searing itself on the memories of a tribe of extreme cinema aficionados – no, I’m not going to link to that scene. The films cult cache inevitably led to consternation and confusion some eighteen months ago with the news that the film was going to be re-made with none other than Bruckheimer action stalwart Nicholas Cage in the title role, the disbelief of which being further exacerbated by the assignation of Werner Herzog to the directors chair in what swiftly become the most unusual team-up since Superman and Muhammad Ali all the way back in 1978. Waters were muddied when a furious Ferrara publicly stated that he wished everyone involved should die in a car crash, Herzog replied with a dismissive ‘I’ve never even heard of this Ferrara or seen his movie’, confirming my suspicion that only someone as mental as Herzog would dare to mock the notoriously demented Ferrara– I’m not a violent man but that is one fist-fight I’d pay to see. Now that the dust has settled the clumsily named The Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call – New Orleans (which has to be the most unnecessarily complicated movie title since this) hobbles into UK cinemas after only achieving a very limited theatrical run and swift DVD release in the US, it’s a shame as this is one beautifully delirious movie, a Creole flavored descent into a Cajun cyclone of criminality.
In a Katrina ravaged New Orleans Terrence McDonagh (Cage) watches an incarcerated convict plead for his life in a swiftly flooding prison, his friend and colleague Stevie (a vacant Val Kilmer) making bets on 
how long they can leave it before the dumb sap drowns. McDonagh leaps into the water to save the felon and through a ‘six months later’ title-card we begin to realise that this selfless act of bravery may just 
have derailed McDonaghs life, resulting in a spinal injury suffered in the fall which has left him dependant on prescription drugs for the rest of his life – that’s the good news. McDonagh has taken to snorting, shooting and stealing just about every narcotic he can lay his hands on, sharing his plunder with his similarly fractured hooker girlfriend Frankie (Eva Mendes, adequate) whilst his father and stepmother are working through their demons via hard liquor. Evidently not content with such depravity McDonagh is also heavily in debt to his sympathetic bookie (Brad Dourif) is involved in stealing evidence from the departments’ evidence lockers not to mention occasionally shaking down Frankie’s Johns for cash and coke. The horrific execution of a small time heroin dealer and his entire family including three children seems to activate McDonagh’s smothered moral compass, it’s an atrocity that initiates a frantic crusade for potential redemption as McDonagh obsessively hunts down the murderous culprits.
It is obligatory for any film-blogger to link to the atrocity of The Wicker Man remake when discussing Mr. Cage, if you think that performance is overwrought then you ain’t seen nothing yet. This is one 
strangely amusing movie which is completely divorced from its supposed ‘original’, other than both films concerning drug-addled, licentious lawmen they really have nothing in common. Whilst the original was an exceptionally grim, dark odyssey of Catholic 
redemption New Orleans is much more of a black comedy, Nicholas Cage (which I could and will lazily describe as being ramped up to ‘eleven’) truly in his element with one of his most twitchily ebullient performances to date – he is terrific if you go with the flow. He is supported with the likes of Michael Shannon, Fairuza Balk and Jennifer Coolidge in an impressive ensemble cast, all of them wantonly unprincipled in a realm where it seems that any meritorious behaviour has been diluted, any virtuous activity have been swept away in the aftermath of the hurricane.
Herzog throws in some bizarrely incongruous moments which elicit the odd chuckle here and there, employing a melange of styles with no intentional aesthetic to build an patchwork feel, there are no expressionist lighting techniques that you’d expect in a dark noirish tale, if anything the film takes place in high contrast, brightly lit exteriors and interiors, his frequent DP Peter Zeitlinger relying more on naturalistic source lighting to illuminate McDonagh’s murky activities. I’ve read that the film is best described as less a fictional movie and more a documentary on an alternate reality which I like, the hallucinations – or should that be potential hallucinations – adding some slight surrealistic flourishes as reverberations in McDonagh’s soporific mind. Herzog litters the film with a Jambalaya of animals – snakes, alligators, dogs, bulls, sharks and yes that now famous iguana scene all providing some alternate, detached perspective on the action, some sardonic, primeval observations on our species ridiculous antics. It’s not difficult to slot this into the Herzog canon, it’s yet another tale of an obsessive male protagonist on a mission in an alien, threatening environment, it opens and closes with images of predators in the jungle, indiscriminately stalking their prey.
I think there’s an inherent fascination with seeing those tasked with defending and supporting our so-called moral civilisation fall prey to the temptations and sins that such a world brings them into contact with, it’s fertile territory to examine the very notions or ‘right’ and ‘wrong ‘not to mention a certain enjoyment in seeing potential heroes transgress the restrictions of polite society and do whatever the fuck they want – people may deny it but that is a cathartic release and it’s no coincidence that the scene in the film where Cage terrorizes two elderly women got the biggest laughs from the audience I saw the film with. There were two ways I could have closed this review, either to link to the fine history of corrupt cop movies with the likes of Touch Of Evil, Q&A, Serpico, Rogue Cop, Infernal Affairs, Unlawful Entry, Violent Cop or Les Ripoux or I could produce a list of some of the best films that make the most of such a charismatic city as New Orleans in the likes of Down By Law, Angel Heart, The Cincinnati Kid, Hard Times, Panic In The Streets, Walk On The Wild Side and, erm, Abbott & Costello Go To Mars. I think I’ll do both.
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