Review: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans

Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans

OPENING: 11/20/2009

STUDIO: First Look

RUN TIME: 122 min

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
The only criminal he can’t catch is himself.

Opening Statement
What happens when you mix eccentric director Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man) with eccentric actor Nicholas Cage (Adaptation)? The most eccentric movie of the year, that’s what, featuring an alligator’s point of view, close-ups of imaginary iguanas, and a break dancing spirit. Sounds weird, doesn’t it? Indeed, it is, but it’s also one of 2009′s best films.

Facts of the Case
In New Orleans, Terence McDonagh (Cage) permanently injures his back while saving a prisoner from Hurricane Katrina’s flood waters. As result of his bravery, McDonagh is promoted to the rank of Lieutenant, but his chronic back pain has resulted in an addiction to painkillers and other narcotics. He’s also a compulsive and unsuccessful gambler. Under these conditions, McDonagh must try to pull himself together long enough to solve a multiple homicide perpetrated by a drug dealer (Xzibit, Gridiron Gang) and, in the process, steal as much cocaine and other drugs as he can get his hands.

The Evidence
There are a lot of strange moments in Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call – New Orleans. Some are so odd it would be easy to dismiss the film as a semi-coherent gritty police procedural composed of a bunch of loosely connected scenes. However, if you can keep your nerve and maintain attention, you will reap the rewards of this tight, symmetrically structured and darkly comedic piece.

Moral decay and regeneration are the themes here, making post-Katrina New Orleans an ideal backdrop for the action. McDonagh, like the city itself, is devastated and trying mightily to keep himself from being washed away into oblivion. This is no easy task and McDonagh’s hunched back reveals a heavy burden that is always threatening to crush him. Further, he receives little support from those around him, such as his hooker and fellow drug addict girlfriend (Eva Mendes, The Spirit), corrupt partner (Val Kilmer, Heat), alcoholic father (Tom Bower, Crazy Heart), and bookie (Brad Dourif, Bride Of Chucky). As a result, McDonagh is pursuing criminals, trying to avoid an internal affairs investigation, and indulging his vices, all with equal vigor.

While McDonagh struggles, Cage does not. This is his movie and his performance is a manic one that exponentially increases in intensity as the story unfolds. As his character becomes more unhinged, Cage turns it up; his accent becomes more pronounced, his shoulders more stooped, and his eyes bulging out of his head. Yes, it’s over-the-top, but completely necessary and pitch perfect. Never more so than when a frenzied McDonagh terrorizes a couple of frail grandmothers at an old age home, barking “You’re the f—in’ reason this country’s going down the drain!” It’s brilliantly loopy.

While the film is filled with such crazed humor, it’s never gratuitous. Even when things threaten to spin completely out of control near the conclusion, Herzog balances the elements strongly, keeping the work from careening too far off the road.

There are two keys to maintaining this controlled disequilibrium. First, the story makes clear that while McDonagh is very troubled, he remains a dedicated and very good cop. Second is the film’s symmetric structure. Port Of Call – New Orleans begins and ends with a trio of scenes involving water, a promotion ceremony, and a shakedown outside a club. More specifically, the film starts with two men against dangerous flood waters and concludes with the same two men sitting in front of a fish tank at an aquarium with the water kept safely at bay behind glass — although, it is possible that the protective barrier could break one day. There is a poetry and symbolism to these scenes and others that shape the movie into a coherent and meaningful whole.

Closing Statement
In lesser hands Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call – New Orleans would either be a confusing, forgettable mess, or a tedious, by-the-numbers crime drama. Luckily, thanks to Herzog and Cage, what has been produced is a unique and extremely entertaining film that is by turns playful and serious.

The Verdict
9/10

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