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Bad Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans review
:. Director: Werner Herzog
:. Starring: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes
:. Running Time: 2:01
:. Year: 2009
:. Country: USA
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I must admit that reviewing Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans isn't an easy task for me. On one hand, I am a big fan of the original Bad Lieutenant as well as its director, Abel Ferrara, and I usually abhor the idea of remakes, which are mostly lazy cash cows for uninspired filmmakers. On the other hand, Werner Herzog, who directed this new take on Bad Lieutenant, is not only one of my favorite directors but probably one of the only filmmakers who was able to remake a classic in another classic — I'm obviously talking about Nosferatu.
At the premiere at AFI Fest, the young producers behind the project stated that they were fans of Mr. Ferrara's film and rather than doing a remake, were just interested in using its premise — a morally bankrupt cop — to build a new vision with it. Watching Mr. Herzog's movie, it is clear that this is not the same movie: while Mr. Ferrara's murky film was exploring the most extreme states of depravity and vice and confronting them with religion and redemption, Mr. Herzog's picture is a quite lighter affair, a dark comedy that indeed does not have much in common with its predecessor, beside its title and a couple of sequences that were toned down.
While Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans certainly won't satisfy Mr. Ferrara's fans, it doesn't do justice for Mr. Herzog's avid followers. Here he seems prisoner of this formatted exercise and is only able to let his emblematic quirkiness loose twice; attempts that are unfortunately unsuccessful — the psychedelic close-ups of a couple of alligators and iguanas. His naturalistic and reflective inclinations are nowhere to be found and this certainly will fall among his most forgettable works — even his Hollywood exercise Rescue Dawn pierced some of his signature themes.
To be frank, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans wasn't as bad as I was expecting either. Within the limits of this movie, Mr. Cage's overacting is — for once — acceptable and almost makes sense, since he's playing a cop who is constantly high. The presence of Eva Mendes and Val Kilmer adds additional spice to the ensemble and Mr. Herzog's angle is clear enough to make us see that this work doesn't take itself seriously — well except for a couple of challenged "film critics" who were not in on the joke. However, I'm not sure this is enough to justify the existence of this movie.
Even if you take Mr. Ferrara and Mr. Herzog out of the equations to focus on the film itself, it's hard to see in it enough originality to make it a work worth a big screen incarnation. While the original film was relentlessly shocking with its high sense of corruption, aiming at revolting you, vices here are embraced, mostly used for laughing value — an approach reminiscent of The Sopranos. The script also borrows situations seen in the original film as well as in other works such as Miami Vice - the series.
Rather than a remake or even an adaptation, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is to the original Bad Lieutenant what The Boondock Saints are to Pulp Fiction, an average and somewhat pleasant work, which should be destined for a career on DVD.
Fred Thom
 Movie Reviews: 1998 - 2011
Movie Reviews: 2012 - present
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