Bad Lieutenant (12A.)
Directed by Werner Herzog.
Starring Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Brad Dourif, and Michael Shannon. 121 mins
Cage plays a bent cop who openly takes drugs, has a hooker girlfriend and is up to his neck in gambling debt. Here is a man who shamelessly transgresses, whose brazen behaviour becomes increasingly outlandish yet nobody ever really calls him to account for it. Indeed, the worse his behaviour, the more success he seems to enjoy. Whatever could have attracted Nicolas Cage to the role?
The prospect of Cage, Mendes and Kilmer starring in a remake of a classic cult movie, directed by Herzog, promised an alignment of the stars that would open the gates of Bad Movie Heaven. And that is what you get, only more so than you could have imagine.
Despite Herzog’s denials it is very definitely a based on the Abel Ferrara film in which Harvey Keitel swore, snorted, shot up, primal screamed and one-off-the-wristed his way through a Mean Streets vision of New York. But is it a remake or a send up?
Keitel’s Bad Lieutenant was tortured by Catholic guilt; Cage’s by back pain. Keitel offered mumbled method internalised rage and anguish, Cage behaves like he’s performing a magic act, pulling out manic moments and crazed line readings as if they were rabbits from a hat. But while this one doesn’t take itself seriously it has a demented, excessive intensity and disregard for convention that is exactly in the spirit to the original.
The question is, are Cage and Herzog in on the joke? The answer is that they must be, though even when the film lets the straight face slip, it’s never quite clear if it’s the same joke as the one the audience is enjoying.
Herzog keeps turning out great documentaries but hasn’t made a decent dramatic film since the early eighties. Probably he’s not really a film director as the term is generally understood; he’s a wandering agent of chaos with a camera who made a few great films largely by accident, often in partnership with Klaus Kinski.
As a thriller the film is a dead loss – Herzog has no regard for investigation narratives or tension so the two hours move quite slowly. Bad movies made on purpose are rarely as entertaining as they think that are (i.e. Snakes on a Plane) but whenever the film seems on the verge of becoming tiresome they throw in a moment of such unsuspected weirdness you may genuinely not quite believe what you have just seen. (Kilmer seems to have been so freaked out by one that he just disappears from the film afterwards.)
The film is laughing-on-the-outside funny but it is more than just an outlandish prank; it pushes through to achieves a kind of grace. It’s a subversion of Hollywood values that becomes a subversion of a subversion of Hollywood values.
Directed by Werner Herzog.
Starring Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Brad Dourif, and Michael Shannon. 121 mins
Cage plays a bent cop who openly takes drugs, has a hooker girlfriend and is up to his neck in gambling debt. Here is a man who shamelessly transgresses, whose brazen behaviour becomes increasingly outlandish yet nobody ever really calls him to account for it. Indeed, the worse his behaviour, the more success he seems to enjoy. Whatever could have attracted Nicolas Cage to the role?
The prospect of Cage, Mendes and Kilmer starring in a remake of a classic cult movie, directed by Herzog, promised an alignment of the stars that would open the gates of Bad Movie Heaven. And that is what you get, only more so than you could have imagine.
Despite Herzog’s denials it is very definitely a based on the Abel Ferrara film in which Harvey Keitel swore, snorted, shot up, primal screamed and one-off-the-wristed his way through a Mean Streets vision of New York. But is it a remake or a send up?
Keitel’s Bad Lieutenant was tortured by Catholic guilt; Cage’s by back pain. Keitel offered mumbled method internalised rage and anguish, Cage behaves like he’s performing a magic act, pulling out manic moments and crazed line readings as if they were rabbits from a hat. But while this one doesn’t take itself seriously it has a demented, excessive intensity and disregard for convention that is exactly in the spirit to the original.
The question is, are Cage and Herzog in on the joke? The answer is that they must be, though even when the film lets the straight face slip, it’s never quite clear if it’s the same joke as the one the audience is enjoying.
Herzog keeps turning out great documentaries but hasn’t made a decent dramatic film since the early eighties. Probably he’s not really a film director as the term is generally understood; he’s a wandering agent of chaos with a camera who made a few great films largely by accident, often in partnership with Klaus Kinski.
As a thriller the film is a dead loss – Herzog has no regard for investigation narratives or tension so the two hours move quite slowly. Bad movies made on purpose are rarely as entertaining as they think that are (i.e. Snakes on a Plane) but whenever the film seems on the verge of becoming tiresome they throw in a moment of such unsuspected weirdness you may genuinely not quite believe what you have just seen. (Kilmer seems to have been so freaked out by one that he just disappears from the film afterwards.)
The film is laughing-on-the-outside funny but it is more than just an outlandish prank; it pushes through to achieves a kind of grace. It’s a subversion of Hollywood values that becomes a subversion of a subversion of Hollywood values.
