Whores, coke, violence, corrupt pigs... you'd think this is the plot
of a rap song, not the latest Werner Herzog film.
GRAND THEFT AUTO meets LEAVING LAS VEGAS is how TIFF midnight
programmer Colin Geddes described BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW
ORLEANS, and he's dead on. As you might expect from any film directed
by Werner Herzog, and staring Nicolas Cage as an out of control, drug
crazed cop, it's every bit as batshit crazy as you'd expect, in a
good way... maybe even a brilliant way.

Here Nickolas Cage plays Terence McDonagh, a cop in post-Katrina New
Orleans who isn't exactly Officer Friendly. He's got problems, but
he's also good at his job -- he wins an award for heroism, and he's a
workaholic, throwing himself into his work at the expense of a social
life. He's not estranged from his father, but since his dad is a
barely-recovering alcoholic, that relationship has little to offer.
His partner, Val Kilmer, in a small role, is pretty much a psychopath.
In fact, his closest friends are probably his bookie, the
always-great Brad Dourif, and a prostitute he occasionally sees,
Frankie, played by Eva Mendes. After a back injury, McDonagh begins
abusing prescription painkillers, which soon escalates to a little
coke, a lotta coke, and even a bit of the old crack-rock. On the way
down to the bottom he flushes away even more money on gambling. And
he pulls over couples and busts them for drugs so he can use the blow
and have sex with the girl while making her boyfriend watch. In the
meantime, he's in single-minded pursuit, in the way that only a
crackhead can be, of medium-time criminal mastermind Big Fate
(Xzibit). And he angers some mafia types. But before long McDonagh
starts bending the law so far that it is hard to tell who the real bad
guys are.

Herzog told cage he wanted him to "turn the pig loose," (a Bavarian
expression) and to "go for the bliss of evil." As the GTA series
shows, there is a kind of gleeful sense of liberation that occurs when
you have a gun and the world is your sandbox. Freed from the normal
constraints of morality, every outing is an adventure, because truly
anything can happen. The wickedness gets huge laughs here, mainly
because all the bad shit going down causes tension in the audience
that acts like the setup for a joke. You're expecting something
horrific, and if the character only does something kind of bad and
blurts out something over the top, it kills. There are other
similarities with GTA, but they are superficial, Herzog said he has
never heard of the game. And obviously, this movie is a lot deeper
than a video game -- there's real human drama.

At his character's fevered peak, in some ways Cage's performance is
reminiscent of Heath Ledger's Joker. He's got the same way of
carrying himself, with a walk that looks like he's not quite right
(ostensibly due to back pain), a high pitched voice, and sometimes a
crack-fueled inappropriate cackle that just screams, "C-ra-zy!" Both
the cops and the drug dealers are afraid of him, because he's utterly
unpredictable. That makes him a thrill to watch. Cage apparently was
able to get into some crazy places and went off-script often,
ad-libbing some of the best one-liners in the film. And this film had
the best one-liners in the festival. At the premiere at TIFF he said
he approached his performance like jazz, and he wanted to bring some
of the spirit of New Orleans to the role in that sense.

But as crazy as the Lieutenant gets, isn't just insane -- he's often
focused on doing the overarching right thing, he just goes too far.
And while I won't say whether this a story of redemption, this is at
least a core of compassion that you sometimes glimpse through the
drug-addled haze that makes him worth redeeming. As familiar as this
plot sounds, this is no by-the-numbers morality tale. Herzog doesn't
moralize or tell you what to think. This character just is what he is
-- magnificently and beautifully flawed.

Herzog explores some of his favorite themes, with Katrina giving a
reminder that we are inconsequential next to the awesome destructive
power of nature. But this is kind of a fake out. The real
devastating forces here are inner demons. Then there are also plenty
of shots of animals, from a snake slithering through the water, to
roadside gators, and even hallucinated iguanas. Fitting for a film
that satisfies our reptilian brains.

As far as the title goes, the only thing this film has in common with
the 1992 Abel Ferrara BAD LIEUTENANT film is that there's a rogue cop
who abuses his authority in pursuit of gambling, drugs, and sex. It
isn't a remake, and director Werner Herzog had said previously that he
hadn't even seen the first film called BAD LIEUTENANT. He wanted to
call this film simply PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS, but a producer,
thinking franchise, won that battle. At the premiere I asked Herzog
about the title controversy, and he said he's made his peace with it
-- he got to make the film he wanted to make, and if it has a funny
title, "So what." And while the title is a bit clunky, this film was
so much fun that I'm coming around to the idea of a franchise. How
about a BAD LIEUTENANT: DETROIT with Samuel L. Jackson? Or BAD
LIEUTENANT: CHICAGO with Robert De Niro? Or BAD LIEUTENANT:
Baltimore by the guys that did THE WIRE?

One thing is for sure though, this concept will only work with a great
actor in the lead role, and a great director who can dabble in crazy-land
but reign it in when things need to get serious. I would never have bet on it,
but Cage and Herzog turn out to be a perfect combo.

- Copernicus