Nicolas Cage stars in two films that open on SA screens this week. Unfortunately, you’ll really need to hunt to find a cinema showing the more interesting of the pair.
The awkwardly titled The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call — New Orleans couples the mercurial actor with German director Werner Herzog in an offbeat character study about an unhinged policeman.
Alongside his small supporting role in Kick-Ass earlier this year, this film is a reminder of how good Cage can be when he isn’t phoning in a part for a film like The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the other Cage film that starts showing in SA this week.
Bad Lieutenant is about as inspired a match of actor, director and script as we’ve seen this year.
Herzog, well known for his volatile partnership with the great German actor Klaus Kinski, has spent his career making films about hubristic anti-heroes and their futile struggles with their inner and outer demons. Bad Lieutenant is a film in this tradition, with Cage taking on a role that may have gone to Kinski 40 years ago.
Herzog insists that Port of Call – New Orleans is neither a sequel to nor a remake of The Bad Lieutenant, a lurid morality tale by exploitation director Abel Ferrara. But the title and the similar theme invite comparisons, nonetheless.
The 1992 original was a more serious-minded exploration of Catholic themes of guilt and redemption. Though raw and deeply flawed, it burnt with a white-hot intensity that left little space for the black humour that characterises the Herzog film.
The way that the two films are most similar is that they are both dominated by a singular performance by the actor in the title role. The original was anchored by Harvey Keitel’s searing performance as the titular bad cop; Cage’s outré acting as every bit as good.
As the film opens, Cage’s character plunges into a flooded prison cell in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina to rescue a stranded prisoner before he drowns. Rewarded for his good deed with a painful back injury and a promotion to lieutenant, the cop starts a downward spiral into addiction.
The film charts the lieutenant’s descent into madness, with a growing dependence on non-prescription drugs causing him to pile sin upon moral transgression. With teeth clenched in anguish and back stooped low by pain, Cage puts the cop’s physical suffering on vivid display.
He holds nothing back as the unbalanced, coke-fuelled lieutenant rages across New Orleans in pursuit of the assassins that murdered a family of Senegalese immigrants. Cage’s lieutenant is a bully who hides behind his badge and rails against innocent and criminal alike with no compunction.
But he’s also shown in a kinder lighter, with his genuine affection for his prostitute girlfriend (played by Eva Mendes) providing a balance to his more thuggish behaviour. As over-the-top Cage’s performance seems on the surface, it’s far more subtle than it appears to be at first glance.
Herzog’s direction just about manages to keep the film on the rails, even though it looks like it could spin out of control at any moment. Unlike Ferrara, Herzog seems to find his Bad Lieutenant’s growing insanity to be as comical as it is pitiful and terrible.
Watch the trailer (via YouTube):
Peter Zeitlinger has an eye for the absurd in his deliberately rough-hewn cinematography, which captures the desolation of a hurricane-battered New Orleans. Surreal moments where the lieutenant’s fevered imaginings bleed with the real world abound. So do bizarre images, such as that of a car-struck alligator lying back-down and paddling a foot in the air.
Nicolas Cage is the guy who once ate a bug on camera and who used to collaborate with the likes of David Lynch and the Coen Brothers. He seems far more at home in this odd but compelling film than he has in most of the CGI and action vehicles he has appeared in in recent years. — Lance Harris, TechCentral
- Watch the trailer from Abel Ferrara’s 1992 film, Bad Lieutetant
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