Reviews so far on Werner Herzog’s “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” have been mixed.
The trailer looked like a ludicrous parody of a B-Movie, the poster, a straight-faced direct-to-DVD cover and various reviews have called it loony, ridiculous and over-the-top, in a bad way. Could it still be successful in an ironic manner or are the reviews just missing the wonder in the odd Herzogian sensibility?
Mmm, no. Let’s say, for arguments sake, that Nicolas Cage’s improv/outburst-heavy performance is amusing, and let’s also say that the now-infamous random Iguana POV scenes, seemingly seen through Cage’s drug-induced haze, channel absurdist profundity, but great highlights do not equal a great or successful picture.
Even if you steel yourself for the fact that Herzog’s weirdo noir is going to be a comedy starring a manic lead within a B-movie plot and nothing more, “Bad Lieutenant,” still falls flat. The odd pacing, shoddy construction and thrown-together tone are seemingly all in service of wild moment lets-see-what-happens laughs and not a lot else.
Ridiculousness and wild flailing do not make for genius, even if some moments are amusingly absurd and occasionally near brilliant. Nic Cage tries to channel the “Vampire’s Kiss” or “Raising Arizona” mad genius of yore, but falls short, despite some admirably ludicrous improvised moments. But the picture is really just catch-as-catch-can delights of nonsense than it is a remotely fully realized film.
Similar to what the life of a drug addict must be like, ‘Port Of Call New Orleans’ is full of crazy highs (some of them genuinely glorious, but most silly and not as fun as advanced ironists claim they are) and lifeless, gray lows, where we wait anxiously for the next hit, while the picture itself becomes oddly sedate.
At the post-screening Q & A, Herzog boasted that the picture was made for a song and still came in under-budget, and it shows. The set design is cheap and the cinematography generally ugly. While this does occasionally fit with the post-Katrina slums, New Orleans is not this gaudy.
The director also boasted about a confused crew who didn’t know what the hell he was up to and again, this feels evident. Rarely does one get the impression that a scene has been carefully blocked out. It seems much more likely that the camera was turned on and following the action as it happened and spasmed around.
But, let’s get to the “plot.” Nicolas Cage stars as Terence McDonagh, a homicide detective decorated for risking his life to save a prisoner in post-Katrina New Orleans. While jumping into the water to assist a trapped and water logged prisoner, he evidently injures himself and sustains a back injury. The event itself is an afterthought, never really shown and seemingly a pitiful excuse to get a story in motion, as this all spirals into painkiller abuse. But not that it really matters, Terrence already has a hooker girlfriend (Eva Mendes), gambling debts (Brad Dourif) and mounting drug habits. Or wait, did they come in the wake of the back accident? It’s not entirely clear, nor does it seem like the filmmaker cares, it’s all simply a hinge to support the impending madness.
During his promotion to Lieutenant, Terrance is tasked with heading up an investigation that involves a slain family from Senegal and also heroin trafficking. Val Kilmer gets some screentime as Cage’s partner/underling, but unfortunately is severely underused.
As the investigation builds, a witness is found that Terrence must protect while at the same time his wild habits and debts begin to surge out of control. He gets a handjob from a girl in front of her boyfriend as a way to get out of a drug charge, he blackmails a football player caught buying pot to throw a game and uses a state trooper friend (Fairuza Balk) to canvas their seized items room for drugs. And these are only random examples from a myriad of ridiculous, out-of-control situations Terrance gets himself into (he also beats on a customer that has abused his hooker girlfriend, which causes surmounting payback issues, and of course threatens an old lady by messing with her oxygen tube, leading to an internal affairs situation).
And this doesn’t even take into account the hallucinogenic scenes with a crocodile and lizard that, while zany and funny, basically don’t make an ounce of sense.
The mess builds to impossible levels, with Terrence crossing several of the wrong people (including a feared ruthless drug kingpin played by rapper Xzibit). Yet, several deus ex machinas manage to neatly wrap up everything in a hysterical little bow.
What ever happens to the murderer? The witness? Does any of it really matter? You’re just here to see Nic Cage laugh like a feral asshole, right? (Yes, there are countless bon mots delivered, but they’re as guffaw-inducing as they are only occasionally enjoyable).
Vacillating between rote cop procedural moments, predictably debased drug moments and interspersed with flashes of dementia, ‘Lieutenant’ can be loony at times, but is also not as batshit crazy as you’ve been lead to believe. Perhaps this IS meant to represent the highs and lows of the drug addled protagonist, but mostly it feels like haphazard filmmaking. They might have been better off not even trying to build an excuse for a story, really.
At its best, ‘BLT’ is “Leaving Las Vegas” as filtered through a bizarre Herzog take on mainstream crime noirs and at its worse, a Cinemax B-movie with low production values you’d probably flip past. Nowhere does it feel like a genuine article Werner Herzog picture and most of the time it gives off the air of the director trying to mischievously squeeze in his strange, catch-lightning-in-a-bottle alchemy proclivities while trying to obey the basic rules of the road in everyday cinema.
Plot, pace and character don’t seem to matter and it’s to the detriment of the whole. Less discerning audiences who just want to see Herzog’s grinning smirk on a genre and watch Nicolas Cage chase the wild boar of ecstatic truth with mixed results, should be satisfied well-enough, but those looking for a fully-realized Herzog film should rightfully be disappointed.
Herzog referred to himself and Cage as “good soldiers of cinema,” in the post discussion of the film and while that remains to be seen with Nic Cage’s career this decade, it certainly applies to the German auteur, but if he’s going to continue the good fight — which we hope he does to his dying day — we hope it’s in service of his own films and original works and not the work-for-hire (with creative freedom) that this one essentially is. [B-]
*Yes, Herzog admitted that the producers of the film came to him and he had no credit in the script. He even said, while nothing in the film was changed, he was slightly worried about being too out there as he did not have final cut.
