Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer
Germany’s Werner Herzog didn’t direct 1992’s original Bad Lieutenant, a masterpiece of bat-shit crazy. (That would be wild man Abel Ferrara.) But he sees that film’s dementedness—and raises. You gotta love Herzog’s balls. He doesn’t have Harvey Keitel, so he bluffs with scenery-chewer Cage. He doesn’t have New York City’s mean streets, so he heads south to a post-Katrina New Orleans. And he’s not preoccupied with religious faith, as was Ferrara, so Herzog fashions a lunatic comedy about righteousness. Consider this a guarantee: You won’t laugh harder at another cop movie this season. Our drug-fueled antihero (“bad” is an understatement) occasionally sees iguanas in his office. So do we. (They’re not really there.) He has a “lucky crack pipe.” He’s not above torturing enfeebled nursing-home residents. Herzog couldn’t care less about realism, adding layer upon layer of dream logic, criminality, and collusion until you have no idea who the perps are. Add to the mix a break-dancing goon, an adorable puppy, and Cage’s most unhinged work—which is saying a lot—and you’ve got the strangest semi-sequel ever attempted. Having seen it, we say it succeeds—as long as you let little details such as seriousness and believability go. On Cage’s arm: the lovely Eva Mendes as an everstoned prostitute, filling up the bras and bedsheets nicely.
