Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans - KDJ

Manic, disjointed, pulpy, a noir-throw-back (or a noir-re-awakening), rhythmic, looped, fantastic, naive, reaching, revolutionary, original, freaking crazy, ungainly, unpredictable, uncoined, undefinable, altogether un-boring, and therefore: great. Melanie, I could not disagree with you more. Nicolas Cage and Werner Herzog have combined their greatness and achieved greatness.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans, is not about plot or character development. Nicolas Cage, Xzibit, Val Kilmer, Eva Mendes, Jennifer Coolidge, and Tom Bower are characters undevelop-able. Confining a drug addict, rapist, hallucinator, over-the-top, corrupt cop (Cage) to a plot within the confines of NYPD Blue or CSI is not only impossible but just impossible.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, is not about New Orleans or Hurricane Katrina. A weakened NOLA, formerly invincible 'city of legends', formerly more sinful than 'sin city' city is only a backdrop for a drug addict, rapist, hallucinating, over-the-top, corrupt cop to be a drug addict, rapist, hallucinating, over-the-top, corrupt cop. Thus, it is not about New Orleans.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans, is about everything else in the day-to-day life of a drug addict, rapist, hallucinating, over-the-top, corrupt cop. "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans, is about seasoning. Like New Orleans cuisine, it finds that you can put anything in a pot if you add the right spices and peppers and simmer it long enough." As I have mentioned before, only Nicolas Cage is capable of going far enough to simmer in a pot with a whole bunch of spicy crap, it takes balls; and for it to come out tasty, it takes a good pot.

Herzog matches Cage's discomfort with normal and raises him sustained, jazz-backed, shaky foreground shots of iguanas, souls break-dancing, and alligators. I am pretty sure that only Nicolas Cage could stare at an iguana for several moments in a movie in such a way that I like it. The thing is, there is only one director I can think of that has the guts to have his lead actor stare at an iguana for several minutes--Werner.

BL:POC,NO has leapt out of the darkness that sadistic plots were ushering all things 'film-nwar' into. William Finkelstein did not write a remake of Harvey Keitel's epic, Bad Lieutenant. He wrote a movie that is so sensationally dark, yet not depressing--not sure how this is done. I think it occurs when the viewer is lucky enough to see everything that a character does not in a sensational way. It is kind of really amazing literature in this way. I mean, 'pulp' movies were all about this and Tarantino and Godard and other writers attempt this and do really cool stuff with it. But this movie hid even less from the ridiculousness of making a movie in the first place. How can a movie begin with the devastation of an inmate trapped in the natural, rising waters that should have been held back by a man-made levy, and end with said inmate slouched even more helplessly on the ground in-front of natural water creatures, being successfully held back by a see-through man made levy? The only way is if every character is integrally dedicated to their naive existence as a character in a Herzog movie. This makes no sense. I loved this movie.