Chapter Two
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans
By Brett Beach
December 24, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
As perhaps is befitting for such a bizarre, loosey-goosey, genre-busting piece of purple poetry as The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call-New Orleans (title as presented in the on screen credits and from here on, affectionately known as POCNO), I don't know if I can write a straightforward review that either praises it, defiles it, or effectively captures the unnerving/arresting/hilarious/boring experience of watching it. This derives primarily from two factors. The first has to do with the fact that I watched POCNO for the first time only a few hours ago. Normally, I like to let a film stew in my brain for a while; if I have viewed it on previous occasions and allowed sentences and half-paragraphs to already start taking shape in my mind, so much the better. But for once, I thought I would feel the thrill of writing under some sort of deadline, even if only an arbitrarily self-imposed one. As such, this review may serve as a second screening (or a viewing 1.5).
The second factor is that I have never been good about taking notes, outside of classroom settings several lifetimes ago in my secondary, collegiate and graduate school phases. For someone who has spent the tens of thousands of hours that I have in darkened auditoriums to connect with the world of cinema, it probably would have been helpful, not to mention enlightening from a historical perspective to have those comments, those unadulterated thoughts and insights from my younger selves upon which to reflect back. But I sucked at keeping a diary and I (in) conveniently never find myself carrying around a notepad and pen. In lieu of this, I have a series of moderate-length observations prior to, during and after POCNO. Imagine them on eight-and-a-half by 11 size note cards if you prefer, although in the case of the longer ones, the writing might be fairly cramped.
Observation #1: Is this even a Chapter Two? I still don't have an answer to this, except to say, I chose to write on it. There is a great article/interview in the Los Angeles Times from last month about director Werner Herzog and actor Nicolas Cage agreeing to collaborate for the first time with POCNO. Contained within is a fairly detailed account of the genesis of the project, which I had hoped would clear up any and all confusion about how this movie is (or is not) a remake/reimagining/homage/continuation/thematic kin to the 1992 Abel Ferrara drama Bad Lieutenant. That NC-17 tale of Catholic guilt, NYC style featured Harvey Keitel at the apex of his omnipresence in the independent film world of 20 years ago baring his soul, his agony and - most famously - his penis. Keitel was an unnamed cop, a family man by day and a gambler, junkie, thief and sexual profligate by night who becomes unhinged while investigating the rape of a nun who refuses to identify her attackers. Even with his moral compass out somewhere taking a hit of crack, he cannot fathom her ability to forgive and it gets to him.
On the wave of the NC-17 "controversy" and acclaim for Keitel's performance, Bad Lieutenant took in about $2 million during its run in theaters. I was going to resist calling it a cult classic, but considering that it seems fairly to have faded into memory (title aside), perhaps it truly is. POCNO, scripted by long-time television writer William Finkelstein (many episodes of L.A. Law and cop shows such as NYPD Blue and Brooklyn South) shares a producer with the first film, a similar title and nothing else. However, just to make things more convoluted, it does give additional screenplay credit to the four writers (including Ferrara) of the first film. This may be the first case in Hollywood history where a title that could conceivably be accused of trading in on a previous "hit" actually isn't and it might have been smarter to call it something catchier and shorter. That's my take, anyway. Check out the end of Ebert's review for a more bemused fantasy of how they came up with the title.
Observation #2: "The" missing article. As an English graduate, I get perturbed by misuses of your and you're and riled up by misappropriate theirs and theres, but I save my deepest simmering rage for tacking on or dropping off "the." Every time I see Clint Eastwood's 1992 Oscar winner referred to as "The Unforgiven"; David Fincher's 2002 thriller name checked as "The Panic Room" or Spike Lee's masterpiece from that same year decked out as "The 25th Hour" (and it is one of the best of this decade, run do not walk to your Netflix account), a little part of my soul dies. I was all set to give David Mumpower and Kim Hollis a good going over for adding a "The" to the title in our holiday preview until I actually saw the damn thing. Why does the poster not have a "the" (or a hyphen for that matter) in the title? Is the title that flashes on screen truly the "correct" one? Why did this film, with near unanimous critical acclaim not screen for Portland critics and open unannounced two weeks ago? Once again, I have no answers. Moving right along (with apologies to my boss for ever doubting you).
Observation #3: Slap a beard on me and call me crazy. Both during and immediately after POCNO, I felt dazed. Perhaps it was such a feeling as Joaquin Phoenix had after crashing his car on the Pacific Coast Highway several years ago, only to hear the disembodied voice of Herzog telling him to remain calm. No free-floating hallucination, Herzog happened to be in the car directly behind Phoenix and also helped assist him out of the wreck and kept him from dazedly attempting to light a cigarette while still in the overturned vehicle.
Herzog has made a more notable name for himself this past decade with documentaries such as Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World - all portraits of real-life figures in the throes of obsessions of some sort or another - but POCNO alludes to both his more recent dip into mainstream (or slightly more commercial) filmmaking with 2008's Rescue Dawn and his own checkered history with leading man Klaus Kinski, his collaborator numerous times in the 1970s and 1980s. It's hard not to draw the line from Kinski (as the mad conquistador in Aguirre, The Wrath of God) bug-eyed and howling on the raft surrounded by monkeys to Cage as drug-, sex- and gambling-addicted cop Terence McDonagh expounding with joy about his "lucky crack pipe." I remember the Nic Cage of my youth eating a live cockroach (Vampire's Kiss), starring in a bizarro z-grade sexual potboiler with Judge Reinhold (Zandalee) or wearing "a panty on his head" (you know which one). It's been a rough ride post-Leaving Las Vegas through 15 years of Bruckheimer productions and comic book adaptations to get back to unfettered, uncut, unhinged Cage. Truth be told, his over-the-top seems just a shade more mellow in his (and my) older age. At times, Cage seemed almost as if he was holding back . . . something? Or is that my jaded, seen-it-pose? Try as I might, though, I can't imagine any other current actor unhooking an old lady from her oxygen tank and pointing a gun at her temple to frighten her and convincingly selling it AND remaining likable.
Observation #4: Without new images, we die. On a weekend where the majority of the movie-going public was jetting off to Pandora to experience sights and sounds the likes of which they HAVE NEVER SEEN BEFORE, I was feeling reactions of a similar kind to a feature with a significantly smaller budget. I don't know if I would have pegged this as a Herzog film if I were shown it with no knowledge of its history. Finkelstein's long tenure on episodic work is evident in that at times POCNO plays like a loopy rejected pilot for a proposed series about a messed-up cop but then it plays itself out to some sense of resolution (does this make it Herzog's Mulholland Dr?)
What is unusual is that this is no pretzel of a plot-twist police procedural. The crime is straightforward. The obvious suspect is called out early on and turns out to have committed the crime. There is no chain of corruption to be unraveled or surprise bad guy. Finkelstein is more concerned with behavior (primarily McDonagh's) and locale (post-Katrina New Orleans, where the film was shot entirely on location). The Big Easy has not been given a gloss of prettified local color to make it seem exotic or mysterious. It feels like an area hit by a natural disaster (much like the fictional one created by Herzog-approved auteur Harmony Korine in Gummo) and still digging itself out. Herzog does include extended interludes with local aquatic wildlife that help tie the plot together on at least some thematic level and two of these - the aftermath of an unseen car accident caused by an alligator on the freeway and a stare down between McDonagh and some iguanas who might not actually be in the room with him - are as warped and singular as any moments I have encountered in film before. From the man who once had a steamboat dragged up the side of a hill because the plot of his movie called for it, I would expect nothing less.
Observation #5: Failure to communicate. Is POCNO a good film or a bad film? Examining it from the viewpoint of a structured, tight screenplay, it's a disaster. The film threatens to build or suggests possible building towards something but then does a lope of a zigzag toward a (fairly unironic) happy ending. Among the actors, Nicolas Cage isn't the whole show but he's fairly close. Eva Mendes, Fairuza Balk, Xzibit, Michael Shannon and an almost unrecognizable Jennifer Coolidge provide measured support in parts both large and small. Val Kilmer is sadly wasted in the film's sole straight role. He's in the first 40 minutes, disappears for an hour and then returns at the end for what threatens to be an explosive climax but then isn't. POCNO is also a failure as a thriller, if that's what it was intended to be. There is no action, fleeting suspense and one brief shootout (said shootout does result in one of the film's other iconic visual moments of which I will only say look back to the quote at the top of the column). As a dark comedy of (rude) manners, POCNO is often a delight. Nobody really calls McDonagh out on his insane behavior and when they do, he still somehow skates away on the thin ice of a new day. If Keitel's Bad Lieutenant was confronting the limits of his reprehensible behavior, Cage's creation still has a ways to go, an improbable safety net still stretching underneath him.
And as for McDonagh, as flagrant and obvious and on the surface as his behavior and gratification and needs seem to be, he still remains a mystery perhaps even to himself. Consider his selfless action in the opening minutes - that sets the plot in motion - and how it dovetails with a neat coincidence and a flicker of redemption at the end. Why does he do this? Bad Lieutenant? Good cop? Maybe only the iguanas know and even in Herzog's cock-eyed world, they ain't talking.
Next time: See you in 2010 with my birthday column (bye-bye Christ year), a look back at the decade in films and a Chapter Two from what I think is the best year for movies in my lifetime (hint: I am kind of stretching the definition of "lifetime"). Happy Holidays!