The following is an industry standard-style review for the purpose of demonstrating my professionalism. Please note I don't suddenly think I'm better than you.
BAD LIEUTENANT
Synopsis:
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans Detective Terence McDonagh investigates the murder of six illegal immigrants. Prescribed Vicodin for a chronic back injury, he detours regularly from the case to procure illegal narcotics for himself and his prostitute girlfriend Frankie. As he gets deeper into debt with his bookie, and his drug-take increases, he becomes personally involved with those under investigation. Soon, his fate and theirs are intertwined.
Review:
As one phoned-in blockbuster performance followed another, we started to fear for Nicolas Cage. Like a once-incendiary comedian now happy to headline a never-ending succession of Disney family films, he appeared increasingly content to grab the cash and slip smoothly and without fuss into the role of Hollywood elder statesman. He had even started voicing cartoons. Would we never again see on-screen the hungry wild man David Lynch once turned to when he needed an actor capable of anchoring his crackpot fairytale Wild At Heart? And speaking of peckish, was the commitment that compelled him to eat a live cockroach in Vampire’s Kiss gone forever? Well, not quite. Judging by his enjoyably feverish portrayal of Det. Terence McDonagh in this update of Abel Ferrara’s 1992 cult original, there’s life in the crazy old dog yet. Not that he didn’t have help. In Werner Herzog the actor has the perfect accomplice: turns out the cheerfully crazed stalwart director is the perfect conduit for channelling Cage’s hyperkinetic tendencies. Who’d have thought?
Set in the months after Hurricane Katrina wreaked such devastation in New Orleans, the story follows McDonagh as he trawls through the city’s underworld in search of those responsible for a multiple homicide, but in truth Herzog doesn’t allow the plot to get in the way of the action. In fact, the police procedural genre is merely a hanger on which the director gleefully drapes such oddities as a stakeout seen from the point of view of an (apparently tripping) iguana, and - in a scene which in the hands of a lesser (saner?) director would have been laughable for all the wrong reasons - the sight of a recently dead man’s soul exiting his body and proceeding to break dance. Indeed, more than anything it’s a faintly black comedy, and often a pretty broad one at that - the ridiculously large .44 Magnum that Cage habitually wears tucked down the front of his trousers makes him look as if he’s wandered in from a lost Laurel and Hardy sketch.
And much of the fun does come from watching Cage turn in his most convincingly loopy performance in years. Sometimes when the actor goes off the deep end you just wish someone would throw a net over him - here, Herzog instead gives him a rope and dares him to hang himself, and the results are often hilarious. The intensity and regularity of his manic outbursts increase throughout the film as Herzog lessens the slack, but there is some nuance to be admired here, too. At one point a fellow cop accuses him of being high, to which he deadpans, “Whatever I took is prescription… except for the heroin.” And a scene in which he recollects a childhood fantasy to his prostitute girlfriend - played with a noble sensitivity by Eva Mendes - is surprisingly touching amidst the surrounding tomfoolery. The character’s actual physicality is important to Cage, too - McDonagh’s chronic back condition is in fact the catalyst for much of this bad behaviour (the Vicodin he is prescribed for the pain soon leads to the cocaine and heroin he swipes from the police evidence room) and Cage wants us to know it. His posture deteriorates throughout until by the conclusion he is practically bent double. It looks painful, and shows a dedication that perhaps has been lacking in recent times.
A welcome return to form for Cage then, in collaboration with a director who has the good sense and instinct to point him the right way and “let the whore loose“, as Herzog calls it. The pairing seems so obvious you wonder why they never thought of it before. Who knows… perhaps the director has found his new Klaus Kinski?
Verdict:
Bad is best for Cage as his Lieutenant cuts a swath through one of the most entertaining films of the year.
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