ENG: Bad Lieutenant: Port of call New Orleans
Skrivet av David Stadig
FilmrecensionFilm: Bad Lieutenant: Port of call New Orleans
Skådespelare: Nicholas Cage, Eva Mendes och Val Kilmer
Regissör: Werner Herzog
Release: hösten 2010
Betyg: 
Let’s begin by brushing the positives: Nicholas Cage finally takes on a role that we won’t forget after 10 minutes. Thank your favourite deity for that after a few years of utter rubbish like National Treasure and run of the mill action. Junkie and police lieutenant Terence McDonagh is a great part where he can really go back to the unhinged crazyness we learned to love.
Both a vibrant Cage and director Werner Herzog also manages to make us truly feel for a character who is a drug-addict, rapist, compulsive gambler, utterly corrupt and continues to make appalling decisions in the line of duty. The idea of making the film in post-Katrina New Orleans also proves to be a good choice. The city, once booming with quaint tourist attractions, seems torn or slightly askew, the screaming social injustice further infused by the disaster very much apparent and enhancing the experience. This could have been used to much greater effect.
Bad blood
Bad Lieutenant PoCNO (hopeless title by the way) has raised a lot of controversy before even hitting the screen. Abel Ferrara, director of the original Bad Lieutenant reportedly hated the film and wished for Herzog to be killed in an explosion. Herzog on the other hand wanted the studio not to include the words Bad Lieutenant in the final title.
Whereas the original Bad Lieutenant was heavier, and filled with intense catholic guilt. Herzogs and Cages lieutenant is more cartoony and crazy. He serves and protects himself and uses the law for his own gain, eventually being forced to bargain with people as dangerous as himself, but outside of the police force.
My interpretation is that there are a lot of elements of Herzogs effort that are parodic. It’s not an arty or really symbolic film, neither is it near being a straight up action film. The over-sized guns and the faux-poetic lines delivered by an all-over-the-place Cage works better as comedic than it does interpreted as a thriller or something deeper. This does not mean that there aren’t artistic or even political statements being made in the film. Herzog simply can’t help himself from sometimes straightening up the sillyness.
Lacks focus
My problems with Bad Lieutenant: Port of call New Orleans might be just that, That the film does not really feel focused. You don’t really know whether what you just watched is meant as parodic, or just cliché. Are you supposed to feel outraged or simply entertained?
The end result is quite entertaining, mostly because you love Nicholas Cage, but not really something that feel as a powerful entity. It feels like a decent flic where there could of easily have been something really powerful.
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