BAD LIEUTENTANT: PORT OF CALL - NEW ORLEANS (2009 - Cert 18)

Nicholas Cage. Is there anyone more frustrating? He has been in the business for a quarter of a century now, you would expect to see a back catalogue of stand out performances and classic films. However, since his Oscar winning turn in Leaving Las Vegas all the way back in 1995, he has struggled to make a mark. Granted, he followed that film with The Rock, Con Air and Face/Off, all now seen as action movie classics, but since those he has been inconsistent at best. There have been flashes of brave choices and good performances, but for every Adaptation and Bringing Out The Dead, there is a Snake Eyes, Ghost Rider and a Wicker Man. Recently however, there have been signs that he's on his way back. Knowing was a perfectly good sci-fi movie that had the confidence and decency to follow its good ideas through to a dark conclusion. In Kick-Ass Cage's brilliant Adam West-a-like Big Daddy was a joy to watch and his relationship with Hit Girl was my most unexpected tear-jerker of 2010. Before that film though he starred in a 'remake' of the Harvey Keitel film Bad Lieutenant. A 'remake' directed by eccentric German Werner Herzog. Now that is not a combination I think anyone could have predicted.



I put the word remake in inverted commas because it's not really a remake at all. More a re-imagining, an adaptation, or perhaps even the buzz word in Hollywood at the moment - a Reboot. Location has been shifted from New York to New Orleans in a time shortly after the destruction wreaked by Hurricane Katrina. The detective in question is no longer trying to solve the crime of a nun being raped, it is the murder if a Senegalese family of immigrants instead.

This change really is a masterstroke. We've all seen cop thrillers in New York, in fact it's become the default setting for a lot of movies that ask the question - How far should the police go? And we all now how New York looks, by day and night. No surprises. Ever. Instead here Werner Herzog gives us a hot, sweaty, humid feel, a city a lot of us aren't familiar with and a city recovering from a terrible disaster. By setting it shortly after the Hurricane there is a poverty and a desperation in a lot of the supporting characters, much in the same way actually that New York was presented in cinema when it hit the depths towards the end of the last century. Crime is a big part of the city, on both sides of the law. In short, the setting is a character in itself, affecting the human characters throughout and adding a depth that has not been seen in cop dramas for a long while.

New Orleans isn't the main character though, it's the titular lieutenant, Terence McDonagh, played by Nicholas Cage, and he really is the centre of the piece. Although he does have to solve a crime, the detective work and being a proper policeman is very much secondary to how the character develops through the course of the film. This is a character piece. A back injury sustained in the line of duty leaves McDonagh a slightly broken man. It's a nice addition to the character as it offers a deformity that may have been the catalyst for his descent. Back injury and slightly hunched walk is very much the tip of the character iceberg though, this role is perfectly suited to Cage's med horse face, the eccentric and manic delivery of the lines is brilliant. You feel that he is constantly on the edge, desperate, addicted to drugs and alcohol, one moment he is down in the doldrums, the next he is coked up to the nines and being abusive, he is violent, perverted. He is a nasty piece of work but yet we still feel sympathy towards him, which is where the skill really does shine through in Cage's performance. He can act a bit nutty, manic laughs, saggy stares, he has done all of that before, but to take a character that is so vile and still make him a hero, all be it an anti-hero, is very impressive.

He is supported by some good names as well with varying success, Eva Mendes is his girlfriend/prostitute and does fairly well with what isn't as interesting a role as it should be. She still elicits the viewers empathy despite not being a very likeable character. Val Kilmer is a colleague of McDonagh's, also bent and on the take. He looks nothing like the lithe heart throb that was once Batman, tubby and rough, he is always interesting when on screen and makes Cage's character somehow look like PC Plod. Xzibit turns up as a gang leader and is exactly what you expect, playing himself but without any emotion of range, just monotone saying 'man' at the end of every sentence. Disappointing casting on that part.

The other star of the show is Herzog. More well known for his documentary films (and being shot in the stomach while with Mark Kermode) he mischievously has some fun with the fact that McDonagh is high for the majority of the film. Although he is violent, vile and addicted to everything you can think of, he isn't like Harvey Keitel's version. There is a comedic tone to a lot of the scenes of violence and drug taking, you genuinely don't know whether to laugh or be shocked, and my reaction did veer between the two constantly. The tonal shift could easily have seemed annoying and clunky but somehow it worked, perhaps it's Cage, it might be Herzog's skill, probably a combination of the two but it does work. Herzog's alligator and iguana-eye views of certain films are typically madcap and again just slot in.

Another thing worth noting is the ending. I'm not a fan of closure in films, I like to be able to take something for myself, but here was an ending that tied everything up but in such a way that I'm still not sure whether it actually happened or it was all in McDonagh's head. A fitting way to round off an odd, interesting and mad film that is well worth checking out.