Friday, November 20, 2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
MOVIE REVIEW
Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans
Days and Nights of The Iguana
Let's go get stoned: Nicolas Cage as Lt. Terence McDonagh
and Eva Mendes as Frankie in Werner Herzog's
"Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans", which opened today.
Lena Herzog/First Look Studios
By Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
Friday, November 20, 2009
Werner Herzog lightens the mood considerably in "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call
New Orleans", a film not meant as a sequel but as an inevitable companion to
Abel Ferrara's dour arthouse cult classic "Bad Lieutenant" from 1992.
Nicolas Cage brings all the camp and debauchery that epitomized his roles in
"Leaving Las Vegas" and "Face/Off" to his latest onscreen character New Orleans
Police Lieutenant Terence McDonagh, a coked-up, amoral mess of a cop who breaks
the law to put away the bad apples. Since he himself is one of those
apples things promise to be very interesting.
Early on a family from the African continent is brutally murdered and the
relatives demand justice. The murder investigation seems to spiral into
nowhere as the audience is immersed in the headspace of Lt. McDonagh. Mr.
Herzog relies on William Finkelstein's screenplay to conveniently dispense of
ill-conceived, weak plot lines for a film that is sometimes funny but mostly
ridiculous.
Mr. Cage's affectations for McDonagh -- wildness, subversion and abrupt laughs
of incredulity after saying a certain criminal's initial -- keep boredom from
setting in. His hunched-over posture, unsteady gait and often mumbling
speechifying are either an imitation of bad acting or an illustration of his
character reacting to the absurdity of the pathetic situation he is in.
McDonagh isn't necesarily acknowledging his own dysfunction however, unlike
Harvey Keitel's more brooding, introspective New York private dick in Mr.
Ferrara's film. For all Mr. Cage's maniacal fervor and excitability, one
wonders whether Michael Rooker would have been a better fit for this Bayou
blunder. Mr. Rooker may have played the role with more intensity, ala Mr.
Keitel, rather than create the wicked carnival that Mr. Cage does here.
Eva Mendes soldiers through uneasily here as Frankie, a drug-addled prostitute
and McDonagh's girlfriend but she is merely a conduit to furthering her
boyfriend's own misadventures. Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner (seen earlier this
year in
"American Violet") plays a drug dealer suspected of the African
family's massacre and is a man that Lt. McDonagh can do business with. Val
Kilmer, who appeared in the Louisiana film
"Deja Vu", plays one of McDonagh's police
officer colleagues.
Mr. Herzog ("Encounters At The End Of The World") employs a mostly drab vision
of the Big Easy, though the after-effects of Hurricane Katrina are kept mostly
out of sight. And instead of letting a bleak canvas (photographed by Peter
Zeitlinger) speak loudly and stand alone, the director inserts the kinds of
visual gimmicks more appropriately at home in a David Lynch film to convey a
state of mind. Mr. Cage's facial ticks and weary self-adulation
sufficiently carry the day even in this swollen display of swamp injustice, so
the occasional addition of over-direction by Mr. Herzog is curious. At
such moments you wonder whether the director trusts his Oscar-winning star
enough to run through the brick walls that he does to keep this disappointing
film afloat.
With: Vondie Curtis-Hall, Fairuza Balk, Jennifer Coolidge, Brad Dourif, Denzel
Whitaker, Michael Shannon, Shawn Hatosy, Shea Whigham, Tom Bower, Lance E.
Nichols, Brandi Coleman and Irma P. Hall.
"Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans" is rated R by the Motion Picture
Association Of America for drug use and language throughout, some violence and
sexuality. The film's running time is two hours and one minute.
Read more movie reviews and stories from Omar
here.