I finally got around to watching Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans after missing it in the theater. I can honestly say that it was pretty much exactly what I expected. A Nicolas Cage and Werner Herzog collaboration just seems like such a logical idea for some reason. And the outcome was as insane as I wanted it to be.
Nicolas Cage has always been an actor with some subtle and not-so-subtle oddities to his acting. Most of the time he divides audiences into love and hate categories because of this. To his credit though, he can still fill theaters with more mainstream fare while also catering to his proclivities to be all Nicolas Cagey.
Cage has been teetering on the edge of irony for years now and it is only going to take a small push to put him into the spot that Christopher Walken has been calling home for the past few years. I really hope that someday Tom Green directs another movie and that it stars Nicolas Cage. That might sound weird but I swear it makes sense and would be great. They could remake Freddy Got Fingered with Nicolas Cage and I would be first in line.
In Bad Lieutenant, Cage plays a drug addict corrupt cop. It all started with a back injury which led to pain killers which led to a "6 months later" subtitle. He needs to solve a five body homicide while getting his fix, keeping an eye on his prostitute girlfriend, checking in on his alcoholic dad, getting his fix again, dealing with his bookie, and keeping up appearances at work. And getting another fix. There's a lot on his plate.
When one snorts what one believes to be cocaine but is actually heroin it can apparently effect one's judgement. Especially while investigating a quintuple homicide. Hilarity ensues. When Nicolas Cage gets to cut loose in movies, it is generally very fun to watch. Check him out in Deadfall. Hilarious. Bad Lieutenant is no exception. What do you get when you take an already eccentric Nicolas Cage performance and you give his character more crack? You get hilarity.
At some point in the movie, I think it was after one particularly great scene in a nursing home, he starts inexplicably speaking in an almost Marlon Brando impression (?). Either that or he was trying to channel The Penguin from Batman. Whatever he was doing with his voice, he keeps it up for the next few scenes. Between all the Nicolas Cagey stuff, the iguanas, the shakedowns, and the dancing souls we have an excellent oddball, dark comedy.
For those of you who loved that last 20 minutes of The Wicker Man, this entire movie is for you.
Today's arbitrary rating is 12 lucky crack pipes out of 10.
2 comments:
the dancing soul part had me dying. funniest thing in the whole movie
Yeah, that was pretty amazing.
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