Nicolas Cage appears to have two modes these days – unhinged and in danger of wrecking his career or just plain unhinged.
He opts for the latter in “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans,” an oddball riff on the 1992 Abel Ferrara film starring Harvey Keitel.
Cage is uncoiled and unwound as a detective in the grip of addiction. The film swirling around him is mostly stable, littered with stellar supporting turns and a murder case just twisted enough to sustain the narrative. And the setting further heightens our interest. It’s post-Katrina New Orleans, a town bludgeoned by tragedy with the physical scars to show for it.
Cage plays Det. Terence McDonaugh (the last name a nod to “Raising Arizona?”), a cop who suffers a back injury while rescuing a prisoner during the Katrina flooding.
Flash forward a few months and McDonaugh is hooked on painkillers and will use his badge to get enough drugs to ease the pain. Narcotics also connect him to a local prostitute named Frankie (Eva Mendes), who seems to genuinely care for McDonaugh in between satisfying clients.
The addled detective somehow squeezes in police work in between getting high, getting busy with Frankie and seducing a fellow cop (Fairuza Balk) for even more confiscated pills. He’s trying to solve the case of five Senegalese immigrants murdered, most likely, by a local drug lord (Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner).
None of this works without Cage’s commitment to the character. McDonaugh is out of control, but shrewd enough to keep his impulses in check. Cage plays him perfectly, lurching from one part of a desiccated New Orleans to the next, sometimes slurring his speech while the drugs course through his veins.
Director Werner Herzog isn’t content shepherding Cage through his latest series of facial contortions. He takes mini-vacations from the narrative to focus in on an iguana lizard one moment, and then a lumbering crocodile’s point of view.
It all adds to the gonzo spirit, even if it makes little sense.
The real punchline comes when Herzog wraps his story up in the tidiest of little bows. Is he satirizing the cop genre or just having more fun than a director should be having?
Who knows, but “Bad Lieutenant” is fiercely entertaining and successful on its own mercurial terms.
(Photo art: Nicolas Cage, right, plays a detective juggling a painkiller addiction while solving a homicide in “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans.”)
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Good review. I think I will re-watch this. In my opinion, this was a very under appreciated film in theaters and at the video store. Too bad. This was an excellent job by Cage.
I especially love the hallucinations in the form of iguanas. Hilarious stuff.
Herzog’s contrast between Louisiana’s natural breakdown and the Lieutenant’s mental/moral/psychological breakdown was fascinating to watch. Not your normal detective movie. You will enjoy the strangeness and natural storytelling.
A good one for Cage, he does an excellent job.