movie review bad lieutenant

The man who stares at iguanas

Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner and Nicolas Cage in "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans."

Werner Herzog ‘s “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans” creates a dire portrait of a rapist, murderer, drug addict, corrupt cop and degenerate paranoid who’s very apprehensive about iguanas. It places him in a devastated New Orleans not long after Hurricane Katrina. It makes no attempt to show that city of legends in a flattering light. And it gradually reveals itself as a sly comedy about a snaky but courageous man.

No one is better at this kind of performance than Nicolas Cage . He’s a fearless actor. He doesn’t care if you think he goes over the top. If a film calls for it, he will crawl to the top hand over hand with bleeding fingernails. Regard him in films so various as “ Wild at Heart ” and “ Leaving Las Vegas .” He and Herzog were born to work together. They are both made restless by caution.

In the gallery of bad cops, Terence McDonagh belongs in the first room. Everyone will think of Harvey Keitel’s lieutenant in Abel Ferrara ‘s masterpiece “ Bad Lieutenant ” (1993) for the obvious reason. I hope this film inspires you to seek out that one. It deserves to be sought. Ferrara is Shakespearean in his tragedy, Herzog more like Cormac McCarthy . Sometimes on the road to hell you can’t help but laugh.

In a city deserted by many of its citizens and much of its good fortune, McDonagh roams the midnight streets without supervision. He Serves and Protects himself. He is the Law, and the Law exists for his personal benefit. Lurking in his prowler outside a nightclub, he sees a young couple emerge and follows them to an empty parking lot. He stops them, searches them, finds negligible drugs on the man, begins the process of arrest. The man pleads. He’s afraid his father will find out. He offers a bribe. McDonagh isn’t interested in money. He wants the drugs and the girl, whom he rapes, excited that her boyfriend is watching.

The film’s only similarities with the Ferrara film are in the title and the presentation of a wholly immoral drug addict. It’s not what a movie is about but how it’s about it. Ferrara regards his lieutenant without mercy. Herzog can be as forgiving as God. An addict in need can be capable of about anything. He will betray family, loved ones, duty, himself. He’s driven. Because addiction is an illness (although there is debate), we mustn’t be too quick to judge. Drugs and alcohol are both terrible, but drugs can drive a victim more urgently to ruin.

Herzog shows McDonagh lopsided from back pain. He begins with prescription Vicodin and moves quickly to cocaine. As a cop, he develops sources. He steals from other addicts and from dealers. In the confusion after Katrina, he steals from a police evidence room. George Carlin said, “What does cocaine feel like? It makes you feel like some more cocaine.”

McDonagh has a girlfriend named Frankie ( Eva Mendes ). She’s a hooker. He’s OK with this. He gives her drugs, she sometimes has them for him. They share something an addict craves: sympathy and understanding. They stand together against the horrors. He’s also close to his 60-ish father, Pat ( Tom Bower ), not close to Pat’s 40-ish partner Genevieve ( Jennifer Coolidge ). His father has a history with AA. Genevieve is a bosomy all-day beer drinker. They live in a slowly decaying rural manse somewhere in the parish. Pat knows what to look for in his son and sees it.

Colorful characters enrich McDonagh’s tunnel-visioned life. There’s hip-hop star Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner as Big Fate, a kingpin who holds the key to the execution of five Nigerian drug dealers. Fairuza Balk as a cop and McDonagh’s sometime lover. Brad Dourif as his bookie (he gambles, too). Val Kilmer as his partner, in an uncharacteristically laid-back performance. Maybe we couldn’t take Cage and Kilmer both cranked up to 11. Bower plays McDonagh’s father as a troubled man but one with good instincts. Coolidge, with great screen presence as always, changes gears and plays a MI-wouldn’t-LF.

The details of the crime need not concern us. Just admire the feel of the film. Peter Zeitlinger’s cinematography creates a New Orleans unleavened by the picturesque. Herzog as always pokes around for the odd detail. Everyone is talking about the shots of the iguanas and the alligator, staring with cold reptilian eyes. Who else but Herzog would hold on their gaze? Who else would foreground them, placing the action in the background? Who but Cage could regard an iguana sideways in a look of suspicion and disquiet? You need to keep an eye on an iguana. The bastards are always up to something.

“Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans” is not about plot, but about seasoning. Like New Orleans cuisine, it finds that you can put almost anything in a pot if you add the right spices and peppers and simmer it long enough.

Yet surely “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans” is an odd title? Let me give you my fantasy about that. Herzog agrees with Ed Pressman to do a remake of the 1993 film, which Pressman also produced. Pressman is no fool and knows a Werner Herzog remake will be nothing like the original. Abel Ferrara is outraged, as well he might be; Martin Scorsese picked “Bad Lieutenant” as one of the 10 best films of the 1990s.

“Gee, I dunno,” Pressman says. “Maybe we should change the title. How about talking a line from the screenplay? How about calling it ‘Port of Call, New Orleans’ “?

“We will compromise,” Herzog says with that Germanic precision he uses when explaining something he needs to make clear. “We will call it ‘Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans.’ ” He’s not going to back down from Ferrara. These are proud men.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

• Brad Dourif as Ned
• Vondie Curtis-Hall as Capt. Brasser
• Jennifer Coolidge as Genevieve
• Fairuza Balk as Heidi
• Nicolas Cage as Terence
• Eva Mendes as Frankie
• Val Kilmer as Stevie Pruit
• Shawn Hatosy as Armand
• Irma P. Hall as Binnie

Directed by

• Werner Herzog
• William Finkelstein

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Movie Review | 'Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans'

A New Orleans Mystery: A Cop So Bad, He’s Good

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By A.O. Scott

• Nov. 19, 2009

“Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” — what an ungainly title for a movie. What does it mean? What kind of sense does it make? You might ask the same questions of the film itself, directed by Werner Herzog and related, by some equally puzzling movie-business genealogy, to another “Bad Lieutenant,” Abel Ferrara’s 1992 tour of New York law-enforcement hell. Neither remake nor sequel, this “Bad Lieutenant” is its own special fever-swamp of a movie, an anarchist film noir that seems, at times, almost as unhinged as its protagonist.

Fueled by Nicolas Cage’s performance — which requires adjectives as yet uncoined, typed with both the caps-lock key and the italics button engaged — Mr. Herzog’s film is a pulpy, glorious mess. Its maniacal unpredictability is such a blast that it reminds you just how tidy and dull most crime thrillers are these days.

The genre, once a repository of weirdness, wild emotion and sly cinematic invention, has recently devolved into a state of glum, routine sadism. The stories lurch toward phony and mechanical surprise endings, and the heroes tend to be glowering ciphers of righteous vengeance, exacting payback and muttering second-hand tough-guy catchphrases.

Not Terence McDonagh, Mr. Cage’s New Orleans cop, who clings to an insane sense of professionalism even as his demons drive him around every bend in the Mississippi River. (Am I talking about the actor or the character? It may be a tribute to Mr. Cage’s genius that I’m not quite certain.) Over the years Mr. Cage has done his action-hero duty, from “Con Air” to the “National Treasure” movies, and he has often been more interesting than a lot of his peers, holding on to some of the idiosyncrasy that makes him worth watching even at his least inspired. Here, though, he is a jittery whirlwind of inventiveness, throwing his body and voice in every direction and keeping McDonagh, the movie and the audience in a delirious state of imbalance.

Sometimes his loose-limbed shuffle and sibilant drawl suggest Jimmy Stewart as a crackhead. (Is there any other movie actor who can summon such a phrase to mind?) At other moments he breaks out in hip-hop non sequiturs, crowing: “To the break of dawn! To the break of dawn!”

He hallucinates iguanas, takes care of a dog and whispers sweet nothings to his call-girl girlfriend (Eva Mendes). He gambles. He steals. He shakes down college boys and gropes their dates. (Now I’m talking about the character, not the actor.)

And — if I may indulge a hip-hop non sequitur of my own — it’s all good. What may seem like random, dissociated bursts of energy are in fact the brilliant syncopations of a player with a sure, if unorthodox, sense of rhythm.

I’m still referring to Mr. Cage, but also to Mr. Herzog, who sets William Finkelstein’s properly pulpy screenplay to his own strange music. (That’s a metaphor. The actual musical score, by Mark Isham, is serviceably atmospheric.)

McDonagh’s ordeal begins during Hurricane Katrina, when he injures his back committing a reckless act of decency in the line of duty, freeing a prisoner from lockdown as the waters rise. For his pains McDonagh acquires a promotion and a drug habit, which combines with his gambling addiction and his fondness for the company of Frankie (Ms. Mendes) to make him a ripe target for an internal-affairs investigation.

That happens, sort of, as does a murder investigation and a whole lot of other stuff, including McDonagh’s entanglement with a drug dealer evocatively named Big Fate (the rapper Xzibit). On the run and at loose ends McDonagh drops in on his dad and stepmom, who seem to be wandering around the set of a Tennessee Williams play without a script.

Who needs one? “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” — why “Port of Call”? what does that mean? — is no masterpiece, but it is undoubtedly the work of a master. For nearly 40 years Mr. Herzog has pursued madness and unreason in various manifestations — he found them, most reliably, in the person of Klaus Kinski — and sometimes succumbed to their allure. Lately he has mellowed somewhat, examining driven, obsessive souls through a ruminative documentary lens and analyzing their passions with wry, sympathetic detachment.

Terry McDonagh — which may be to say Mr. Cage as well — enters a realm where craziness and craft become one, but Mr. Herzog does not follow him all the way. There is discipline in “Bad Lieutenant,” and a principled respect, similar to that shown in Mr. Herzog’s war movie “Rescue Dawn,” for the pleasures and requirements of genre.

The atmosphere is redolent with corruption and need, and nutty as the movie sometimes is, its brutality and confusion are never played for laughs. It has a warped sincerity, and an energy that keeps going and going. To the break of dawn!

“Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” is rated R. It has swearing, drug use, sexual situations and violence that is, all things considered, fairly restrained.

• Cast & crew
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Bad Lieutenant

While investigating a young nun's rape, a corrupt New York City police detective, with a serious drug and gambling addiction, tries to change his ways and find forgiveness and redemption. While investigating a young nun's rape, a corrupt New York City police detective, with a serious drug and gambling addiction, tries to change his ways and find forgiveness and redemption. While investigating a young nun's rape, a corrupt New York City police detective, with a serious drug and gambling addiction, tries to change his ways and find forgiveness and redemption.

• Abel Ferrara
• Harvey Keitel
• Brian McElroy
• Frank Acciarito
• 226 User reviews
• 84 Critic reviews
• 70 Metascore
• 2 wins & 5 nominations

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• LT's Son (#1)
• LT's Son (#2)
• (as Frankie Acciarito)

• LT's Wife

• LT's Daughter
• LT's Baby Girl

• (as Paul Calderone)

• (as Leonard Thomas)

• Korean Store Owner
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• Trivia Like many indie-minded directors of low-budget films, Abel Ferrara didn't bother with permits most of the time. "We weren't permitted on any of this stuff", editor Anthony Redman admitted. "We just walked in and started shooting." For the scene in which the strung-out lieutenant walks through a nightclub, they sent Harvey Keitel through an actual club.
• Goofs When the lieutenant stops the car with the two rapists inside, a passerby seen through the driver side window points at the car and can be heard saying "They got a camera."

Zoe : Vampires are lucky, they can feed on others. We gotta eat away at ourselves. We gotta eat our legs to get the energy to walk. We gotta come, so we can go. We gotta suck ourselves off. We gotta eat away at ourselves til there's nothing left but appetite. We give, and give and give crazy. Cause a gift that makes sense ain't worth it. Jesus said seventy times seven. No one will ever understand why, why you did it. They'll just forget about you tomorrow, but you gotta do it.

• Crazy credits The "Jersey Girls" character credits are reversed. The actress who plays the driver, Bianca Hunter , is listed as the passenger, and Eddie Daniels , who appears as the passenger, is listed as the driver.
• Alternate versions The original US NC-17 VHS version that was available for rent is completely uncut. As it was produced before the Led Zeppelin legal action, it included all usage of the Schoolly D track "Signifying Rapper."
• Connections Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Sister Act/Encino Man/Alien³/Far and Away (1992)
• Soundtracks Pledging My Love Written by Don D. Robey (as Robey) / Fats Washington (as Washington) (P) 1954 Music Corporation of America, Inc. Performed by Johnny Ace Used by permission of MCA Records, Inc.

User reviews 226

• Apr 25, 2005
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• December 17, 1992 (Argentina)
• United States
• Cảnh Sát Phạm Tội
• 1911 Hone Avenue, Bronx, New York City, New York, USA (St. Clare of Assisi School)
• Bad Lt. Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $1,000,000 (estimated)
• Nov 22, 1992

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 36 minutes

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Bad Lieutenant Review

01 Jan 1992

Bad Lieutenant

Abel Ferrara out-sleazes even his own grubby oeuvre with this powerful if overbearing study of a soul swallowed by depravity.

In truth, the intensity is more implied than real and far less bloody than any of the accompanying controversy suggested.

Still, there's every form of narcotic imbibing going and Keitel beats off in front of two girls he's pulled over for a minor traffic violation and later staggers about bollock-naked mewing like a sick cat. Stunningly he never even recieved an Academy nomination as the cussedly vile nameless New York cop spiralling out of control - the role he was born to play. Which is a strange kind of compliment.

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Bad lieutenant — film review.

Filled with unexpected turns and subversive humor, Werner Herzog's film is a jazzy, entertaining riff on the theme of a cop who spends too much time in a sewer of criminality and corruption.

By Ray Bennett , The Associated Press September 4, 2009 1:22pm

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Venice Film Festival — Competition

VENICE — Filled with unexpected turns and subversive humor, Werner Herzog’s “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” is a jazzy, entertaining riff on the theme of a cop who spends too much time in a sewer of criminality and corruption.

It’s a far cry from Abel Ferrara’s 1992 NC-17 film with a similar title, and it will appeal to a different audience. It has a seriously involved performance from Nicolas Cage as a good detective on a downward spiral of drugs and gambling; there is a lot of very black humor; and it develops, somewhat surprisingly, into something suggesting a kind of cheerful pessimism.

Herzog has made a piece of mainstream entertainment with quirky particulars, and with Cage’s star power, it could see substantial rewards from the boxoffice domestic and international. The film was greeted in Venice with much laughter and, at the end, loud, sustained applause.

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Veteran TV cop show writer William Finkelstein’s screenplay sets the story in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and it allows Herzog to explore the way bad things happen to good people while crooked people prosper.

Cage plays dedicated police officer Terence McDonaugh, who in the opening sequence jumps into a flooded-basement cell to save a locked-up prisoner from drowning, permanently injuring his back. Prescribed medicines ease the chronic pain that he is left with, but soon he’s taking illegal drugs, whatever he can find or steal.

The framework of the picture is a police procedural with McDonaugh and his colleagues, including Steve (Val Kilmer) on the trail of the killers of a family of five caught up in drug dealing.

All the while, McDonaugh is trying to score whatever will make the pain go away, and there are many inventive, scary and sometimes hilarious scenes showing how he goes about it. He has a hooker junky girlfriend (Eva Mendes) and a tolerant bookie (Brad Dourif), and he runs afoul of powerful bad guys while playing ball with a significantly dangerous drug lord.

Kilmer doesn’t get to do much, but Mendes and Dourif make fine contributions, as do Fairuza Balk as an amorous former flame and Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner as the drug king.

But it’s Cage’s show, and his body language conveys just how much pain McDonaugh is in with one shoulder permanently clenched and his gaze on alert for the next fix. It’s a sly, intelligent performance that brings to mind the tortured character he portrayed in the grievously overlooked “Vampire’s Kiss” (1988).

Ferrara’s “Bad Lieutenant” was a lurid depiction of a very damaged detective made memorable by a committed performance by Harvey Keitel. That cop’s drug-induced illusions involved a lot of Catholic guilt and visions of Christ. Herzog mischievously has the cop in his film see lizards. Iguanas and alligators pop up when least expected, and there’s a funny scene in which the camera captures an iguana up close with Cage’s demented cop in the frame looking weirdly related.

Production: Nu Image/Millennium Films Sales: Millennium Films Cast: Nicolas Cage, Val Kilmer, Eva Mendes, Fairuza Balk, Jennifer Coolidge Director: Werner Herzog Producers: Edward R. Pressman, Randall Emmett, Alan Polsky, Gaby Polsky, Stephen Belafonte Executive producers: Avi Lerner, Danny Dimbort, Trevor Short, Boaz Davidson Screenwriter: William Finkelstein Director of photography: Peter Zeitlinger Production designer: Toby Corbett. MUSIC: Mark Isham Costume designer: Jill Newell Editor: Joe Bini

No rating, 121 minutes

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Review: bad lieutenant.

Abel Ferrara was in the right place at the right time to make Bad Lieutenant .

If I had to choose the most important films of the 1990s, within the top three would probably be Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant . Not since Martin Scorsese bared his faith in The Last Temptation of Christ did a film so aggressively contemplate the horror of grappling with body and soul. Shot in the raw, gritty style of the Italian neorealists, with a handheld camera roving the streets of New York City and film stock bubbling over with grit and grain, much of the film’s first half rubs our noses in the life of the title character (Harvey Keitel), and you’d be hard-pressed to find an individual laid more to self-indulgent waste. The lieutenant (we never learn his name) is first seen bellowing at his children while driving them to school, saying that if their auntie is taking too long in the fucking bathroom then they should call him over and he’ll throw her ass outta there, and after the children kiss him goodbye (his non-response to affection speaking volumes), he takes abundant snorts of cocaine while parked in the schoolyard, with rosary beads and a cross in the foreground dangling from the rearview mirror of his car.

That moment says everything you need to know about this guy, but Bad Lieutenant offers a series of incidents that not only present the lieutenant as a corrupt man, but perhaps the most depraved and lost anti-hero the mean streets have to offer. He steals drugs from crime scenes, willfully ignores a carjacking while buying a cup of coffee, uses a payphone to make outrageous, financially irresponsible gambling bets on the World Series, inhales vast amounts of cocaine and heroin with various somnambulistic junkies, and spends the night in a hotel with two skinny girls slow-dancing with him in a stumbling haze. Some of the more vivid images include the lieutenant’s hands being so shaky he can’t even pour whiskey into a glass, so he guzzles it straight from the bottle until it burns; then we see him wobbling in a doorway, fully naked, his arms outstretched in an attempt to find balance as he utters a soul-crushed, humiliated moan. It’s a fearless performance, but Keitel isn’t just showing his dick—he’s being frighteningly and vulnerably emotional. He’s completely unafraid to present himself as a broken man, and even his howls and shrieks feel like those of a helpless, pathetic child.

As an actor, Keitel seemed to have been on a kind of quest during the 1990s. At the end of the previous decade, he played Judas in Last Temptation of Christ as a blue-collar Brooklyn everyman, a guy who wanted so badly to understand the mysteries of God but, deep down in his heart, knew he was better at trusting his gut instincts and working with his hands. His performance as Judas contains that paradox, but this poetic struggle was also evident in Keitel’s work in Jane Campion’s The Piano , where he played a man without a country, and in Theo Angelopoulos’s Ulysses Gaze , where he played an American seeking authenticity in Greece and the Balkans—even during his final scene in Reservoir Dogs as he moans at the camera like a wounded animal after realizing an act of betrayal.

Here was an actor committed to his craft, and it’s touching to think he saw it in existential terms, believing that by embodying a series of meaningful roles about men digging into themselves for a kind of inner truth, he was able to get the audience (and maybe himself) closer to what it means to be human. Usually we speak of filmmakers like Ingmar Bergman as using films to express their inner souls, but Keitel achieved this through performance. His acting seems less like transforming into a character than exposing his very self. During this period, his interpretation of roles was akin to a messy autobiography. His scenes inside the church in Bad Lieutenant , for example, are frighteningly inarticulate, as his character sees a bloody vision of Jesus Christ and starts shouting, “Where were you, you rat fuck? Where were you? I’ve done so many bad things!” Self-loathing and rage lead to asking for forgiveness, and the whole moment is played out in almost a single shot. You don’t see any acting here; it’s as frank a portrayal of human crisis as I’ve ever seen. It’s so real, so truthful, you either believe Keitel is the greatest actor of his generation or that he was using this film as others have used a therapist’s couch: to vomit out his fears.

The lieutenant has this moment in church because, as we’ve seen, he’s an unhinged Catholic, something that bothers him in a very deep place underneath his drug abuse, gambling, sexual deviancy, power-tripping, and lawbreaking. His Catholicism is spelled out more in the handful of family scenes, where we see he has almost a half-dozen kids running around the house and multiple relatives living with him, including an old grandmother. There are multiple images of the cross in his nauseating daily life (even during a scene where he busts two girls for a broken taillight and masturbates on the side of their car while forcing one of them to imitate a blowjob, there’s a prominent crucifix in the left hand corner of the frame). When a nun is brutally raped on the altar, the case finds its way to the lieutenant, and it troubles him in ways he can’t understand. His first instinct is to avoid the problem, then when he can’t let it go he begs the nun to let him enact vigilante justice against her assailants, but she refuses, claiming she has forgiven them.

The concept of forgiveness, and the possibility of using this profound experience as an act of redemption for a destructive life, doesn’t come easily to the lieutenant. He has to fight with God, then during his moment of truth where he plunges into an abyss of salvation, he does so smoking crack and slapping the faces of those he means to forgive. In other words, yes, he’s crossed a threshold, but he’s doing so bitterly, confusedly, aggressively. Flanney O’Connor’s Wise Blood imagines Christ as a ragged, shadowy figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of one’s mind. Even as the lieutenant does an act of good, he can barely see it straight, comprehending more that it’s an act of sacrifice than generosity.

Ferrara was in the right place at the right time to make Bad Lieutenant . After Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs gave Keitel some street cred in the independent film world and King of New York defined Ferrara as a visionary auteur combining art-house instincts with B-movie sleaze, the two of them found kindred spirits in each other. Their preoccupations were pushed to the limit in Bad Lieutenant , whose rough aesthetic is a combination of fly-on-the-wall documentary storytelling, locked down and flat presentational images inside real location apartments and stairwells, and lingering shots that take in a sense of locale or, more revealingly, of people. Training his camera on Keitel, who is in almost every single scene and shot of the movie, Bad Lieutenant wears on its sleeve that it will take us to the darkest nether-regions of the human heart. It is boldly NC-17, but unlike most exploitation cinema, Ferrara can’t seem to help himself from making the film a personal, frightened psychic diary, a pitiful shriek for help, and a powerful statement about how even the damned can achieve a moment of fleeting grace.

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Jeremiah Kipp

Jeremiah Kipp is a New York City based writer, producer and director with over ten years experience creating narrative and commercial films.

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Bad Lieutenant (United States, 1992)

Harvey Keitel plays an unnamed New York City lieutenant who's a lot worse than the criminals who infest his streets. A womanizer, drug abuser, alcoholic, and gambler, the bad (and unnamed) lieutenant epitomizes corruption and decadence. When his chance at redemption comes as the result of the brutal rape of a nun, is there anything left within him to redeem?

If a movie could survive on the force of a single performance, Bad Lieutenant would be it. Keitel throws himself into his role with undisputed gusto. He is never upstaged; in fact, most of the time when he's on-screen, whoever happens to be sharing the scene is virtually invisible. Keitel holds nothing back, and his performance serves to hide some, but not all, of Bad Lieutenant 's numerous flaws.

While the first two-thirds of the movie work sporadically as a lurid character study of the lieutenant, they are incomplete. One of the most obvious unanswered is how he got where he is -- what events ignited his moral disintegration, or has he always been like that? Not only does the film make no attempt to probe that issue, it's not concerned about it. Even though the lieutenant appears to have hit bottom by the time the movie opens, he still manages to find new depths to sink to. Unfortunately, Bad Lieutenant collapses during the final half-hour. Attempts to redeem the title character send the film careening off course until the chillingly realistic final scene snaps everything back into focus. During this extended denouement, there's a lot of wierd religious symbology and an unnecessarily graphic rape scene.

At least the mood isn't unremittingly bleak. There are numerous instances of black humor, some of which are probably unintentional. The extreme excesses of the bad lieutenant are at times comical, but it's unclear whether director Abel Ferrara wanted us to laugh on these occasions. Nevertheless, aside from Keitel's often over-the-top and always brilliant performance, there's little of value in Bad Lieutenant . As good as the lead actor is, he's not enough to save this picture from landing on the scrap-heap of uninspired, derivative, and grotesquely distasteful character studies. Ferrara is definitely no Martin Scorsese.

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Bad Lieutenant’s terrible baseball bets walked so Uncut Gems’ doomed basketball wager could run.

What it's about

Bad Lieutenant is no misnomer: Harvey Keitel’s policeman really is one of NYPD’s worst. Already corrupt, abrasive, and abusive at the film’s outset, the movie chronicles his coked-out descent into total depravity after he’s called to investigate a heinous crime amid rapidly worsening personal circumstances. The brilliance of Bad Lieutenant is therefore a counterintuitive one: as awful as the Lieutenant is, we can’t help but feel emotionally involved because, in Keitel’s bravura performance, we can see the glint of pain — and thus of a person — within.

Always one for provocation, director Abel Ferrara pushes our empathy to — and maybe even beyond — its natural limits, only to break with the film’s hitherto unrelenting grit and dangle the glinting possibility of transcendent redemption in front of us. Anyone familiar with Catholic guilt cinema (movies like Martin Scorsese’s Who’s That Knocking At My Door and Mean Streets) will instantly recognize the same undercurrent running through Bad Lieutenant — even if Ferrara takes the idea of juxtaposing the profane with the sacred to the extreme here.

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Bad lieutenant: port of call new orleans.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 2 Reviews
• Kids Say 1 Review

Common Sense Media Review

Extreme "bad cop" depravity is definitely family-unfriendly.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (an unofficial remake of 1992's Bad Lieutenant ), is far too dark and depraved for kids, even most teens. It centers on a post-Katrina New Orleans police lieutenant/junkie (Nicolas Cage) who curses, steals, issues bribes, gambles,…

Why Age 18+?

The main character is addicted to painkillers (Vicodin), cocaine, and heroin and

A constant barrage of "f--k" and "s--t" in all their variations (including the f

Hardly any nudity shown, but there's plenty of sex talk and sexual situations, m

Characters pull and fire guns, and there are a few fistfights, but the bulk of t

Any Positive Content?

Definitely no positive role models. Main character McDonagh indulges in just abo

No positive messages here. The hero is a terrible role model who avoids trouble

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

The main character is addicted to painkillers (Vicodin), cocaine, and heroin and drinks alcohol at all hours of the day. His girlfriend also takes drugs. His father is a recovering alcoholic, and his father's wife is a beer-drinking alcoholic. Drug dealers are everywhere, and various drugs are often on display. Occasionally, the main character experiences weird hallucinations that feature various swamp creatures and reptiles. No children are shown involved with drugs.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

A constant barrage of "f--k" and "s--t" in all their variations (including the favorite: "s---bird"), plus a few uses of the "N" word ... as well as just about every other word in the book.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Hardly any nudity shown, but there's plenty of sex talk and sexual situations, mostly dangerous and illicit. The main character visits his prostitute girlfriend several times while she's with "clients"; a pair of gangsters discusses having sex with her as payment on a debt that he owes. The same character attempts to sleep with a pretty traffic cop; she strips to her underwear and crawls onto the bed, but he's passed out. In another scene, after the main character busts a young couple, the girl offers him sexual favors, which he accepts -- they include kissing, grinding, and touching of private parts with hands (though again, no real nudity is shown).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Characters pull and fire guns, and there are a few fistfights, but the bulk of the violence is verbal: characters exploding in rage and frustration and threatening others. Viewers also see the aftermath of a murderous crime scene, with bodies strewn about, and there's a fatal shootout that involves blood and falling bodies.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Role Models

Definitely no positive role models. Main character McDonagh indulges in just about every type of bad behavior in the book -- swearing, drug addiction, sex with multiple partners, gambling, cheating, stealing, blackmail, threats, bribes, and just about anything else you can think of -- with no real consequences; he gets out of trouble with a combination of luck and more bad behavior. Even when shows himself to be reformed in public, in private he slips back into his old patterns. The only note of hope involves his girlfriend, who truly seems committed to changing her life.

Positive Messages

No positive messages here. The hero is a terrible role model who avoids trouble thanks to luck and bad behavior, rather than redemption or realization. The movie's ambiguous ending suggests some kind of redemption, but it's most likely false.

Parents need to know that Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (an unofficial remake of 1992's Bad Lieutenant ), is far too dark and depraved for kids, even most teens. It centers on a post-Katrina New Orleans police lieutenant/junkie ( Nicolas Cage ) who curses, steals, issues bribes, gambles, threatens people, associates with thugs, has sex with multiple partners, engages in needless violence, dates a prostitute, and is generally an out and out lowlife. It can all be traced to an injury he sustained while rescuing a drowning prisoner during the hurricane, but the movie suggests that he was a scoundrel even before then. The film does offer a hint of redemption, though what kind and how effective it will be is pretty ambiguous. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (2)
• Kids say (1)

Based on 2 parent reviews

From a College Students Viewpoint

What's the story.

During Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans cop Terence McDonagh ( Nicolas Cage ) grudgingly rescues a soon-to-be-drowned prisoner. The act promotes him to lieutenant but also injures his back. Enduring constant pain, he becomes addicted to painkillers and other drugs and begins behaving very badly (though he was really no prize before). While on the trail of a murderer, he bribes and threatens people, visits his prostitute girlfriend Frankie ( Eva Mendes ), steals drugs from the evidence room, upsets some gangsters, loses a bet with a local bookie, blackmails a football player, and forms an alliance with a local thug -- all while trying to deal with his alcoholic father and stepmother. Will Terence learn a lesson here, or is he too far gone?

Is It Any Good?

BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS will appeal to fans who know the work of German-born maverick director Werner Herzog . And indeed, the new film has much in common with some of Herzog's crazed past masterworks like Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) and Fitzcarraldo (1982). The drawback is that fans of equally crazed maverick filmmaker Abel Ferrara will compare it to the original 1992 film Bad Lieutenant and find the new one lacking (though the two films really have very little in common).

Ultimately, enjoyment of the new movie will rest on viewers' willingness to succumb to intense, loony, personal filmmaking as well as extreme subject matter with lots of drugs, swearing, violence, and sex). Those who do may find themselves laughing at the same time that their jaws drop to the floor at the movie's sheer audacity and envelope pushing. But those who don't may find the movie pointless or even offensive.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how the violence in this movie compares to others they've seen. Does it have more or less impact than bloodier films? Why?

How does the movie portray addiction? What are the real-life consequences of drinking and taking drugs?

Discuss the initial act of bravery that got McDonagh into this mess. Do you think he'd have done it again if he had known what would happen? Does this act mean that there's a tiny glimmer of goodness in him?

Despite all his bad behavior, McDonagh really seems to love his girlfriend and goes out of his way to protect her. Does this mean that, aside from his numerous other faults, he has a hint of selflessness?

Movie Details

• In theaters : November 20, 2009
• On DVD or streaming : April 6, 2010
• Cast : Eva Mendes , Nicolas Cage , Val Kilmer
• Director : Werner Herzog
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Latino actors
• Studio : First Look Pictures
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 121 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : drug use and language throughout, some violence and sexuality
• Last updated : June 20, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

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Bad Lieutenant Reviews

Keitel’s performance is astonishing, with the actor completely exposing himself physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 18, 2024

Even by the scuzzy standards of Abel Ferrara’s filmography, Bad Lieutenant is particularly filthy.

Full Review | Jun 5, 2024

Ferrara seeks to expose his subject. What this film is about is the performance, Keitel’s absolute bearing of his character’s soul.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 30, 2023

Always one for provocation, director Abel Ferrara pushes our empathy to — and maybe even beyond — its natural limits, only to break with the film’s hitherto unrelenting grit and dangle the glinting possibility of transcendent redemption in front of us.

Full Review | Aug 25, 2023

Keitel's performance is courageous, almost psychotic, because it is deeply and profoundly authentic.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 2, 2020

Ferrara uses this fictional piece to penetrate the corrupt soul of a dirty rotten cop when he is confronted with something more terrible than even himself.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 3, 2019

[Keitel] keeps us watching his descent without wanting to look away. Only an actor with tremendous reserves of power could accomplish that.

Full Review | Jan 8, 2019

It's a powerhouse performance in a film of jabbing intensity and wit.

The greatest New York City depiction of repentance in the deepest, darkest slums of the human soul since Scorsese's "Mean Streets."

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Jan 7, 2019

As emptily defiant as a bit of graffiti on the base of a dustbin.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2018

Bad Lieutenant generates a fascination of abominations as Ferrara drives home his message about police corruption -- with Keitel's cop as the avatar of everything sick and evil in perverted law enforcement.

Full Review | May 30, 2018

It's a movie of wall-to-wall depravity and profound spiritual longing, at once one of the dirtiest and most deeply religious pictures I've ever seen.

Full Review | May 17, 2018

This is bull of a very high order.

Full Review | Nov 13, 2017

Alongside "Reservoir Dogs" Able Ferrara's 1992 tour-de-force crime drama provides the epic showcase for Harvey Keitel's impressive acting abilities.

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | Sep 26, 2010

The combination of Keitel, New York City, and the Catholic Church reminds of Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets. Yet Bad Lieutenant is much more disturbing and in your face, and successfully portrays the destruction of the soul.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 6, 2010

Ferrara was in the right place at the right time to make Bad Lieutenant.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 5, 2009

Keitel's performance is perhaps the needed counterpoint to Christopher Walken's ice-cold overlord in Ferrara's visionary crime opus King of New York

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 13, 2009

Members of the gutter-al elite will be the sole survivors.

Full Review | Apr 9, 2008

The work of a warped wizard.

Keitel is onscreen for pretty much the entire movie and clearly relishes the opportunity of playing someone not so much teetering on the abyss as leaping off with a grand piano manacled to each ankle.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 9, 2008

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Movie Review: Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call: New Orleans (2009)

• Dan Schneider
• Movie Reviews
• One response
• --> September 19, 2010

Werner Herzog is so unique as a director of films that he is as close to being uncategorizable as any filmmaker in the medium’s history. His 2009 film, Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call: New Orleans , is no exception. The film is a sort of satiric riff on the 1992 B film, Bad Lieutenant , made by schlockmeister Abel Ferrara, and starring Harvey Keitel. That film got wildly divergent criticism, but was a pretty bad film, and not nearly as campily fun as Ferrara’s best known film, King Of New York . And when I say this film is a satire, I mean it, even starting from its tripartite naming, which is rumored to have come about because the film’s producer had produced Ferrara’s film, and wanted to restart it as a sort of film franchise, in the mold of the television series CSI. Ferrara reputedly wished death upon the producer, Herzog, and all involved because he was so protective of his original piece of garbage. Herzog counterclaimed that his film is neither a sequel nor remake, and this is basically true. Other than the fact that the two lead characters in the films are corrupt police lieutenants, nothing else is the same.

The screenwriter for the film is William Finkelstein, but clearly Herzog “Wernerized” the script, adding in his own indelible touches, and making the film almost a pure satire of police procedural films, rather than the straight cop buddy film it could have been, since the two biggest male stars are Nicolas Cage, as Terrence McDonagh, and Val Kilmer, as Stevie Pruit, his partner. Kilmer’s role is so generic that one wonders why he did the part, save for a paycheck. Then, again, maybe it’s part of the satire of Hollywood buddy films, because Stevie starts and ends the film, but disappears for 80% of it, in the middle. Similarly off the rack is Eva Mendes, as Franky, the prostitute with a heart of gold, who is an addict and shares drugs with Terry. He got hooked when he saved a prisoner stuck in his cell in a New Orleans jail, after it flooded because of Hurricane Katrina, hurt his back, and was prescribed Vicodin. The bulk of the film ostensibly is about the murder of an African immigrant family by the local drug lord, and Terry’s investigations. But, in reality, this is just an excuse to allow Cage to scenery chew: He loses a star witness, he argues with his drunken dad (Tom Bower) and drunken second wife (Jennifer Coolidge), he steps on the toes of a Mobster, he threatens two old ladies in a Senior Citizen’s Center, he stops a minor drug deal so he can get drugs and ends up having sex with the guy’s gorgeous girlfriend (Katie Chonacas) in the parking lot, forcing the beau to watch at gunpoint, he gets in debt to a local bookie (Brad Dourif), tries to fix a college football game, steals drugs from evidence rooms, tries to fix his bookie’s niece’s traffic ticket, which leads to a near-sexual encounter with a former co-worker (Fairuza Balk).

Despite all this, Franky ends up going to AA meetings with Terry’s dad, and Terry ends up snorting cocaine alone, as his stepmother boozes, and they watch cable TV together. Then comes the much discussed ending, which works as a dream sequence or satire, but not reality. A year passes, and all the loose ends of Terry’s life are tied up in a scene that is too unreal to be true. The football game he tried to fix is won, despite the player he blackmails not playing, so his bookie pays off; the thug he earlier harassed for beating up Franky, which got the Mobster down on his ass, ends up kissing his ass after he learns the Mobster was killed by Terry’s drug lord pal, who ends up arrested and convicted, getting him promoted to Captain. Franky and he seem to marry, buy a perfect home, and she ends up pregnant, and getting along with his father and wife. It’s all too neat and perfect, yet a delicious ‘Fuck You!’ to Hollywood action films’ ends. To top it off we also see an almost exact repetition of the scene where Terry stops a guy and his girlfriend in a parking lot, but the scene ends before another sex act, and the film ends with him meeting up with the druggy con (now a year clean) he saved from the jail, to start the film. He asks if fish dream, and the two end up at an aquarium watching fish swim by. It’s so odd and bizarre, yet so perfectly Herzogian, that the movie really defies description.

Is Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call: New Orleans a great film? No. Is it a fun film? Yes. Is it worth seeing? Yes. Is Cage good in it? Maybe, because little acting chops are needed. Then, again, that’s the point of satire, to show that little effort is needed in mimicking the crap that passes for quality, in most instances. The DVD, put out by First Look Studios, shows the film in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, and there are only a few DVD features. An audio commentary is not among them. This is a shame, for with a good prompter, Herzog is amongst the best film commentarians going. What we do get are two trailers for the film, photos from the shoot, by Herzog’s wife, and a slapped together ‘Making Of’ documentary that is not really a documentary, just captured footage. Peter Zeitlinger’s cinematography is as good as it’s always been, in such films as these. The musical scoring, by Herzog and Mark Isham, is also good, and quite feral and raw. The focus on odd bits, such as breakdancing ghosts of dead mobsters, invisible iguanas on coffee tables, snakes that slither through flooded prisons, and an alligator that eyes its run over and dying mate from its own eye level, are just some of the odd views the film gives. Even the actors, in minor roles, don’t really act, they just are, and become as iconographically symbolic as the animals.

Yet, the film has power, because, as Serpico showed, there are few things more ‘real’ in film than cops who abuse their power. Yes, Cage’s Terry becomes almost clown-like, but the things he does are done every day, in every major police force, all around the world. The Blue Wall Of Silence protects the scumbags. Terry’s is the Type 1 corrupt cop. They are up to 5% of all cops. Type 2 is the cop who does not commit brazenly illegal acts, but writes false tickets to meet quotas, harasses drivers, and takes bribes (in the form of money or female’s phone numbers) to drop charges against them. They are up to 80 % of the police force. Type 3 is the most prevalent corruption, and they are the 99+% of cops who look the other way at Types 1 and 2 (obviously there’s overlap between the three types). So, claims that the film is not realistic are wrong; it’s merely stylized realism. And, the film it actually shares the most, thematically, with is Curtis Hanson’s 1997 masterpiece, L.A. Confidential , which also focuses on corrupt cops and an execution in a home. But Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call: New Orleans really has only one kinship, and that’s with the many oddball films in Herzog’s own canon. My guess is that fictive masterpieces like he did in the first two decades of his career, are simply beyond Herzog now, and that the best we can get, not unlike Woody Allen, are flashes of brilliance, and the occasional mesmerizing small documentary. Good enough for most filmmakers, but coming from Herzog, it’s hard to put aside the notion that his career could have been even more, could have transfigured the medium to an even greater degree. Nonetheless, films like this will suffice, just as they will entertain and dog the viewer with a mind demanding more than just the Hollywood formulae of yore. See it, and move somewards from yourself. Watching Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call: New Orleans , is there any reason not to?

I'm a fan of all things art and I've a fine eye for detail. What's your excuse?

Movie Review: Dad’s in Heaven with Nixon (2010) Movie Review: The Story Of Film: An Odyssey (2011) Movie Review: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) Movie Review: West of Brooklyn (2008) Movie Review: Trilogy: The Dust of Time (2008) Movie Review: Gomorrah (2008) Movie Review: Hunger (2008)

'Movie Review: Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call: New Orleans (2009)' has 1 comment

October 14, 2010 @ 9:28 pm Albert Leach

I posted the following comments on another review site. I rarely comment on things but I am in a wave of enthusiasm. I hope such isn’t some protocol mishap. None the less…..This film was a satire of blundering corruption- Corruption Works! (wonder who the object of said satire might be…) And not just the direct corruption of Cage’s character but the deeper and stumbling corruption of we the us, folks- plus, TOPICAL, that other guy in the White House of most the aughts. The thing that makes it work is that Cage’s character leaps into corruption through an act of off-hand munificence, jumping into the brown muck of snakes to save a man he deems less than to be saved. Tragedy unto (and it took its time) satirical epiphany. At the end, the new family is sober and the whore-bride is pregnant. (Classic Comedy Result!) I have no idea if Mr. Herzog is pulling a leg with his “No, didn’t see the, what, original.” But Mr. Finkelstein sure did see. A whale of a movie in answer to another whale of one. In a way, strangest movie in such a way. That then This….. I slept on this movie and woke to find it the best movie I’ve seen in years- a movie about the ultimate corruption: indifference to suffering. And Cage’s character gets to wheel (and boy does he wheel) through a satire and a miracle play, of sorts. His character is redeemed by an act of mercy- but not before he plays through depths which his act of mercy brought him. The movie is bookended by an act of mercy and that act’s result saving, bringing redemption. And yet, it’s a brilliant satire of corruption, spiritual corruption. Luckily, I’m a sucker for cop films- good, bad, or tepid. I bumped into this film on the Netflix- said, “Bad Lieutenant- wasn’t that an old movie? Cage, Herzog? What now? New Orleans?” What a fine bump!

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The Movie Review: 'Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans'

“Iguana / Alligator footage by Werner Herzog.”

This tidbit of information appears in the closing credits of Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans , but it might more usefully have been conveyed in the opening titles, if only to give audiences a better idea of what’s in store. Though it borrows the first half of its name from Abel Ferrara’s 1992 film, and likewise tells the story of an out-of-control, drug-addicted cop, the movie is neither remake nor sequel; it’s a Herzogian exercise of another kind altogether. (Both directors have said they would have preferred the new film not be titled Bad Lieutenant at all, but Herzog was overridden by the producers, who envision a somewhat dubious franchise boost at the box office.)

In contrast to Ferrara’s pitiless redemption parable, Herzog offers dark comedy, an exaggerated exploration of what he calls “the bliss of evil.” The movie’s first shot, of a snake slithering sinuously through fetid water, is at once a metaphor for that evil and an inside joke, tweaking its own obviousness. You have to wait until later in the film for the alligator, which watches forlornly by the side of a highway where its mate has been run over, and the iguanas, which jitter on the screen to “Please Release Me.”

And then there are the bipedal reptiles. Central among these is New Orleans policeman Terence McDonagh, played with loopy intensity by Nicolas Cage. (Is it a coincidence that he essentially shares a surname with Cage’s inept stickup man in Raising Arizona ? Another inside joke?) When we first encounter Terence, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, he is a dutiful cop by the undemanding standards of the Big Easy. He and his partner (Val Kilmer) have been sent to check that all the prisoners are evacuated from a prison in which the flood waters continue to rise. When they find that one has been left behind, Terence, in contrast to said partner, chooses not to let him drown. This act of minimal heroism does not go unpunished, however: In addition to ruining his $50 Swiss underpants, Terence suffers a back injury he is assured will plague him for the rest of his life. Cue the Vicodin.

Flash forward six months, and Terence has moved on to harder stuff, which is to say pretty much anything he can get his hands on, whether through property-room larcenies or the shaking down of coke-addled clubbers. (Though he will later self-righteously declare, “Everything I take is prescription--except for the heroin,” this is not in fact true.) Throw in mounting gambling debts thanks to a bad eye for college football, a prostitute girlfriend being menaced by the mob (Eva Mendes), and a killer crack dealer he can’t seem to bring to justice (Xzibit), and our bad lieutenant is having a very bad week.

Herzog directs the film with ironic whimsy, mixing the understated and over-the-top in equal measure. Some scenes are filmed like a horror movie, with low angles and tracking shots that follow Cage as an organ thrums menacingly; others are more openly playful. But all teeter precariously--and by design--on the fence between awesome and awful. That the film tumbles frequently into the former category and rarely into the latter is a testament to Herzog’s dexterity: Making a bad movie this good is harder than it looks.

He is aided considerably by Cage, who mines the reservoir of repressed mania and offbeat charisma that made him such an interesting young actor in the 1980s and early 1990s. I would say this is his best performance since 2002’s Adaptation , if that didn’t seem like damning with faint praise: No star working today chooses his roles with more emphatic disregard for quality . Canting his shoulders at a stiff angle and pursing his lips, Cage offers a portrait of a man out of kilter physically as well as morally. And if, on occasion, he overdoes it, well, in this context overdoing it is essentially the point of doing it at all. His bad lieutenant is the twelve-vehicle pileup of human car wrecks, an invitation to cinematic rubberneckers everywhere.

Christopher Orr is a senior editor of The New Republic .