Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

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  December 23, 2009

  sanjurosamurai

  herzog's newest film will never be confused with one of his great masterpieces, but i actually really enjoyed watching this film. nic cage gives the most eccentric performance of his already eccentric career, and the best word to describe the film is "bizarre", but in a good way...( read more). the film was far from perfect with some moments of sub par dialogue and an ending that was way too neat to fit the messy storyline, but overall this is a film i enjoyed.

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  December 20, 2009

  gilbertgumphrey

  Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is one of those movies where when its over, you're not sure if you liked it or hated it; whether it was really good, or really bad. All you know is - you have to see it again. Well, I have watched it again, and I'm no closer to figuring ...( read more)out what the fuck this movie is than I was the first time. I don't know what it all means. I don't know the point of the iguanas, or why Nicholas Cage has an accent for half the flick, or why the last 20 minutes are so surreal it could be a dream sequence. The movie is both brilliant and maddening, insane and trippy, pretentious and lackadaisical, predictable yet wholly original. In short...you won't see another movie like this in 2009, or perhaps any year, and during a time where freshness is a quality lacking in many movies, this alone makes it worth a recommendation.
  
  This probably sounds like damning with faint praise. But make no mistake - I was not bored watching Bad Lieutenant. It's a film you can't take your eyes away from. Mostly this heightened interest is from Nicholas Cage, who's in every scene of the film and basically represents both the best and worst forms of acting he's displayed in his career. "Over the top" doesn't even begin to describe this performance. He thrashes, he gnashes, he smokes and snorts and laughs and fucks and slaps and shoots his way until eventually, the movie ends. Catharsis? The only redemption here is so hollow and seems so purposefully contrived, it HAS to be fake/"all a dream" (if this finale had been placed with the director's aggravation, everyone would be lamenting the studio fucking with a director's vision - but instead, Werner Herzog has gone on record saying he wanted the ending to be a hilarious depiction of descending to Hell, so now it's all deemed brilliant - remember the finale of Taxi Driver, and that's what we get here). Whatever the purpose of this character's arc, I can certainly say that Cage gives it his all, and goes for broke. It's an impressive and shocking performance.
  
  And the rest of the movie basically revolves around that - and also Herzog's camera, if you notice that kind of thing in the movies. I love the way he moves his camera, pulling in and out and around in ways I would never have thought of. It's a perfectly shot film, helped by having a very intrusive musical score by Mark Isham (also on purpose, though, and also therefore kinda cool). But I'm just not sure what to make of it all. The script has some really great moments; Cage going ape shit in a drug store, the now infamous Iguana scene, or the even more peculiar moment where a man is shot and then Cage says his "soul is still dancing', and we see a younger version of that character breakdancing around to the sounds of a banjo. But there's a lot of stuff, too, that just doesn't work. The script has some dialogue clunkers. Cage's relationship with Eva Mendes doesn't really go anywhere, and a lot of the subplots manifested from his "badness" (like the trouble he gets in with two old ladies in a retirement home), aren't satisfactorily dealt with. But then, I get the feeling this was all part of the point - that Herzog and his writers were trying to say something about the nature of most cop movies by making it so bizarre and twisted and, essentially, such a mess. If that's the case, then good for them - but I sure don't fucking know what the point was.
  
  My biggest complaint would perhaps be the comparison to the first film. Other than the title and the fact that the main character is a drug addicted and power hungry cop, there's no relation to the 1992 Abel Ferrara movie (he's also a lot better behaved in this version, if you can believe it). Maybe this is just as well. But that film had a strong power to it, a religious urgency brought about by the heavy Catholic stuff in the film. Here, the Bad Lieutenant doesn't give a shit about religion, and I think that's missing something that was really important and pivotal in the first film. But whatever. Port of Call: New Orleans is still a fascinating flick, one that narrowly sidesteps being a masterpiece - but one that also barely misses being a total disaster. If you're open to very different types of filmmaking, then you owe it to yourself to see this flick. If not, then steer clear.

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  December 18, 2009

  mrpopcorn

  "The only criminal he can't catch is himself."
  
  Terence McDonagh is a drug- and gambling-addled detective in post-Katrina New Orleans investigating the killing of five Senegalese immigrants.
  
  REVIEW...( read more)ter>
  Kissing cousin in name only to Abel Ferrara's "Bad Lieutenant" provides ample scenery-to-chew for Cage in a sort of return to form/gonzo freaky-deaky tour-de-force as a New Orleans cop whose back injury leads to a downward spiral of drug addiction and other forms of debauchery while being promoted to lead a task force into the investigation of a brutal slaying of Senegalese immigrants linked to a drug kingpin. Loosey-goosey filmmaker Werner Herzog stretches the bare-bones yet serviceable script by veteran TV scribe William M. Finkelstein and lets Cage get his ya-yas out (the sole reason to see and an extra * for good measure).

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  December 17, 2009

  sitenoise

  Eva Mendes doesn't have much screen time. I don't know why she's on the movie poster. Wait. Yes I do. There's no use comparing this to the 1992 film called Bad Lieutenant by Abel Ferrara because it's not a remake, not the same film at all.
  
  Herzog doesn't spend a lot of time on t...( read more)hings, which is good, I suppose, because that way we get more Herzog. But then again, if he would have known ahead of time that he was going to get the performance from Nicolas Cage that he got he might have spent a little more time massaging the script and he would have produced a masterpiece. Instead what he gives us is a pretty good movie with a masterpiece performance from Cage. The film comes off as a series of vignettes rather than a smoothly flowing story. A lot of it is rather implausible if you stop and dissect it so maybe a series of hallucinogenic impressions was the only way to go. It's a great film but it's not a masterpiece.
  
  sitenoise at the movies: The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

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  December 13, 2009

  ceWEBrity

  HAHAHAHA WHAT?

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  December 22, 2009

  LYNNWOODS04

  Nicolas Cage, Shawn Hatosy, Val Kilmer, Eva Mendes, Xzibit
  
  In Werner Herzog?s new film ?The Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans,? Nicolas Cage plays a rogue detective who is as devoted to his job as he is at scoring drugs -- while playing fast and loose with the law. He w...( read more)ields his badge as often as he wields his gun in order to get his way. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina he becomes a high-functioning addict who is a deeply intuitive, fearless detective reigning over the beautiful ruins of New Orleans with authority and abandon. Complicating his tumultuous life is the prostitute he loves (played by Eva Mendes). Together they descend into their own world marked by desire, compulsion, and conscience.
  I am conflicted on how I feel after watching this movie. I guess it's never a good sign when you continuously check to see how much longer the movie has. But I didn't hate the movie either. Just seemed very long, and at times moving at a slow pace. Just seemed like it should have been more fast paced. But, when it did finally end, I do feel like it was a good movie. The whole two hours and one minute is worth sitting through because the ending is genius. Never put one together with the other. So the ending earned major points from me. Nicolas Cage.. What an actor.. He is pure brilliance in this movie. There is no one else that could have pulled this role off like him. There were also some actor's in this movie that I haven't seen in a film in awhile. Like Fairuza Balk and Shawn Hatosy. Eva Mendes character felt a little like her character in "We Own The Night". Or maybe she just portrayed them in the same light. But nothing spectacular there. Val Kilmer really didn't have a lot of screen time, but when he did he made himself known. So I guess my only negative comments is on the length of the movie, or more so the pace. Other then that, good movie and I definitely recommend it.

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  December 21, 2009

  gjhaddus

  Herzog dirigindo Nicholas Cage. Quero muito ver isso.

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  December 20, 2009

  vdesheva

  I *love* Nicolas Cage but this movie was totally meaningless to me....:(((

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  December 20, 2009

  rayld02

  It's not totally a remake of the 1992 Abel Ferrara film starring Harvey Keitel. But this Werner Herzog's "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" is another to watch out for.
  
  Nicholas Cage is Lt. Terrence McDonagh, Jr. a city police officer. He uses drugs as prescribed, But he...( read more) got into the medication so high that it instantly becomes his addiction. Drugs is his natural pacifier; and he depends on cocaine, methamphetamine, and marijuana.
  
  Lt. McDonagh is awarded with a recognition for his dedication for work at the beginning of the film. He stands and delivers his speech. But things go wrong as we watch him through the end. He does his job, yes, because he's a police. But what others don't realize is that he does things other than being a good cop, and that's being bad. He deals drugs, he uses them, he manically perverts women, he scares and blackmails people. Summing up all of his violations as a police officer, ten years of imprisonment might not be enough to pay for his wrong doings.
  
  Nicholas Cage has just given a quite exceptional performance in this film. Two of his films are my favorites for this year, Bad Lieutenant and Knowing. In Bad Lieutenant, he has just defined what a great character acting is about. it's about taking the risk and being able to extract the essence of each single scene. At first, i was doubtful about putting him on the main role; because he might be too soft or might have the tendency to become soft.Basically, the bad lieutenant role requires a professional actor to portray, because of the complexity of its character and ego. That, Cage did not fail, he has made the film an asset for the industry.
  
  I also has this big two thumbs up for the Harvey Keitel portrayal of the bad cop. He is intense in the 1992 film which jives totally appreciable and commendable.
  
  Werner Herzog's abrupt shift from philosophical and sophisticated German films, and documentaries and shorts to a strong American semi-gangster film is one to be critical about. He has just proven how versatile his directing is. He is one of few directors that make such good films even if he's gone old doing same things as he did before.
  
  The challenge of this film is tough, but the job is well done. The artistic sense of the people behind this film makes it one of the best films of the year, for me. I catch myself laughing at times, and the excitement it retracts is way fun.

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  December 19, 2009

  noelfernandez09

  ** I don't know what is wrong with this film... Cage was great... Kilmer although one dimensional in this movie.. he did okay... Mendes is well... hot... maybe because this movie is like The wire (HBO TV series) and this is good for a mini movie... maybe.. but overall it is enter...( read more)taining....

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• Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans