So who wins? Harvey Keitel’s unnamed Bad Lieutenant or Nicolas Cage’s Bad Lieutenant, Terence McDonagh? Who’s the baddest? It’s not even a close call.
The Bad Lieutenant- Port of Call; New Orleans (the full US title… catchy eh?) claims to not be a remake or sequel to Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant of 1992. The director, Werner Herzog, claims he doesn’t even know who Abel Ferrara is! It’s cheap, I know, to use an exclamation mark so. I just couldn’t bring myself to type “gosh”.
This new Bad Lieutenant is more mad than bad. Sure, he does bad things, and I won’t tell you what; after all, with films that declare their depravity in their title, part of the fun is going along to see just how low they can go. Well Cage goes pretty low. Early in the film he’s doing your bog standard Bad Lieutenant stuff, shaking people up for drugs, having crazy sexy stuff with young girls in car parks. You know the drill. It’s when he goes to the old people’s home that things start getting tasty. I knew a good scene was coming up when his character hid behing a door and decided to have an electric shave. That’s it, no more info. Just go and see it. Watch out for the crocs, the iguanas, and Brad Dourif (the voice of Chucky) as a sweety pie bookie. Oh, and the always entertaining Val Kilmer. And Fairuza Balk. There’s lots to recommend this slow creeper of a crazy film. And the ending is just perfect.
TBL-POC:NO is great, but Nic’s not The Bad Lieutenant. He’s just a Bad Lieutenant. The bad one’s Harvey. Nic wears Swiss cotton underpants. Harvey, well, he wears none: Naked Harvey, sticking his belly muscles out and crying like a cow.
I hope Abel takes Werner up on his offer of a chat over a bottle of whisky. I can see a third Bad Lieutenant being born, Cage and Keitel going head to head, crack to crack, bet to bet; The Bad Lieutenants- Bad and Badder: Port of Call: Midford Castle. Or TBL-B&B:POC:MC for short.
20th Century Mummified Fox 