Bad Lieutenant Review

Werner Herzog has a reputation for being a bit mental. In the past he has cooked and eaten his own shoe after losing a bet. There was a short documentary made about this incident, the snappily-titled Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. He was also shot whilst being interviewed by Mark Kermode but insisted on continuing the interview as ‘it was not a significant bullet’. You see? Crazy.

Nicolas Cage is also a rather deranged individual. The evidence? His performance in The Wicker Man remake and the fact that he named his son Kal-El after Superman’s real name. Bonkers. Now, what would happen if we took this pair of fruit-loops and got them to make a film together? Well somebody did and the result is Bad Lieutenant and it’s brilliant.

Cage plays Terence, a cop promoted to lieutenant after some heroics during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately Terence injures himself and gets addicted to his pain medication. Like Dr House dialled up to eleven, his addiction escalates from Vicodin to weed, to coke, to heroin as the film progresses. Terence also has the small issue of a multiple homicide to clear up, sky-rocketing gambling debts to clear, a young witness to protect and his father’s dog to babysit. Eva Mendes, teaming up with Cage once more after 2007’s Ghost Rider, plays Terence’s girlfriend, whore-with-a-heart-of-gold, Frankie.

Cage gives the performance of his life, chewing up the screen and spitting out chunks of dialogue with barely contained fervour. If you thought he was fun as Big Daddy in Kick-Ass, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Cage clearly relished the role and is a joy to watch. Mendes also gives a fine performance and the supporting cast, including Val Kilmer, Xzibit and the ever-amusing bit-parter Jennifer Coolidge, play their parts well.

Bad Lieutenant takes the well trodden hard-boiled cop genre and warps it; Terence skulks around his beat, comically oversized .44 Magnum sticking out of trousers like Harry Callahan’s doped-up younger brother. The generic conventions of renegade cop movie are exaggerated to the point of parody; to say too much would spoil some of the film’s delight, but just ‘til you see Terence threatening witnesses, attempting to rig football matches and the lengths he goes to get his next hit.

One senses that perhaps Herzog would rather be making unhinged natural history documentaries (see Encounters at the End of the World and the mind-blowing insanity of Grizzly Man) and is probably looking to raise some cash to fund his next project. Rather than phoning in the direction however, Herzog makes the film never fearing to skew the genre further out of recognition or stick in a bizarre repeating lizard motif in the scene.

To conclude, Bad Lieutenant is one of the most unexpected and most entertaining films you’re liable to see any time soon. Hats off to the madmen.

http://www.london-student.net/2010/05/29/bad-lieutenant-review/