IN Werner Herzog’s new film, Nicolas Cage plays a rogue detective Terrence McDonagh, who starts out as a good cop, receiving a medal and a promotion to lieutenant for heroism during Hurricane Katrina. During his heroic act, McDonagh injures his back and later becomes addicted to prescription pain medication. McDonagh struggles with addictions and finds himself involved with drug dealer Big Fate, who is suspected of murdering a family of African immigrants.
Review
WERNER Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans creates a dire portrait of a murderer, drug addict, corrupt cop and degenerate paranoid.
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. He and Herzog were born to work together. They are both made restless by caution.
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.
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.
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
FUELED by Nicolas Cage’s performance — which requires adjectives as yet uncoined — 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 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!
A.O. Scott, The New York Times
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Director: Werner Herzog
Writer: William M. Finkelstein
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Fairuza Balk, Jennifer Coolidge, Vondie Curtis Hall
