THE BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL – NEW ORLEANS (2009)

Posted by Michael Thielvoldt

Everything’s coming up aces for newly appointed Lt. Terrence McDonagh (Nicolas Cage) in Werner Herzog’s latest narrative about a New Orleans police lieutenant with a bad streak (to put it lightly).

The film opens as McDonagh and fellow scumbag/partner Stevie Pruit (Val Kilmer) are rifling through a flooding New Orleans prison at the onset of Hurricane Katrina. After rummaging through another officer’s locker, and swiping a set of nudie pictures of the man’s wife, the duo make their way onto the cell block where an inmate is trapped in his cell. The prisoner is nearly overcome by the rising water and is begging for help. The two immediately jump into (not the water, but) a round of stakes, betting on how long the man has before he drowns. Back and forth they go betting money then the pictures until McDonagh finally concedes—against his partner’s protestations—to jump into the water and release the pleading prison.

We learn that McDonagh’s leap into the dark waters resulted in an injury that will plague him with back pain for the rest of his life, ultimately leading to a serious drug addiction. But, in consolation, and because of his “bravery” in the field, he is promoted to the rank of lieutenant and our story can begin.

Cage gasps at his own amazingness as an actor

What unfolds is a black comedy cop drama that still has me scratching my head three days later over what exactly I saw on that big screen last Monday night. The latest addition to eccentric German director Werner Herzog’s cannon, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans is a remake of Abel Ferrara’s 1992 Bad Lieutenant, staring Harvey Keitel.

The film, which follows McDonagh as he berates old women, essentially rapes younger ones, and plunges deeper and deeper into his own addictions attempts awkwardly to incorporate Herzog’s recurrent thematic interest in man versus nature. But, ultimately, it does not succeedin this task. This is partially due to the fact that the story has no interest in nature, other than human nature.

The film opens during the Katrina floods, but other than setting up the scene for the eventual rescue, the remainder of the film unfolds in the aftermath of the storm and pays no real concern to the effects of the flooding. Post-Katrina New Orleans is simply the setting, nothing more.

Oh yeah! Iguanas

But, still Herzog attempts to force this clashing of man and beast onto the screen through a series of sporadically placed, perplexing, and oddly erotic cutaways to reptiles. The snake slithering its way through the prison in the film’s opening, the crocodile eying the scene of an accident where one of its kin lies disemboweled and dying after a run-in with a car, the iguanas that may or may not be resting on a table during a stakeout. It is possible that these reptilian interludes are symbolic of McDonagh’s growing addiction, particularly in terms of the iguanas. Perhaps they are comedic relief in a film bent on making you laugh at the very moments it also seeks to make you cringe. However, what I saw in these moments was a director that just can’t help but turn his camera on the wild side of life, and here he just so happens to do that literally.

Please, don’t get me wrong; I really enjoyed this film, even the bewildering moments described above. Nicolas Cage was surprisingly entertaining as the steadily deteriorating police lieutenant. He was brilliantly over the top having been given what seems to be carte blanche over the extremity of his character. Throwing around faces reminiscent of Castor Troy, and shouting lines like “I’ll kill all of you! To the break of dawn!” and “Shoot him again. His soul’s still dancing,” Cage walks the line between black comic genius and unintentional hilarity. Thinking back on his work in the Coen Brothers’ Razing Arizona, I’m landing on the former.

Cage and Mendes

Eva Mendes was adequately cast as McDonagh’s drug addict prostitute girlfriend. But Val Kilmer’s role as the sadistic sidekick, Stevie, was the missed opportunity of the year. Kilmer was given a role that could have been one of the great vile villains of contemporary cinema. But, in a turn of events as sick and twisted as Stevie himself, Kilmer was given nothing to do with him. Instead, he spit out his lines, collected his paycheck, and called it a day, which is fine for him, but I feel cheated.

Even so, I still strongly recommend this picture. If you haven’t yet seen it and you are finishing this review, I apologize. I went in cold, knowing only that Herzog was behind the camera and Cage was in front of it. And that’s the way I recommend seeing it. But, if you have a friend that absolutely must know something about a film before giving it a chance (and we all have at least one), I suggest having them read the last paragraph of this review. Herzog, Cage, eerily-eying iguanas. That’s all you need to know. Enjoy the show.