Flick of The Day: Bad Lieutenant Port of Call: New Orleans

Abel Ferrara's 1992 original take on the Bad Lieutenant was a controversial and flawed tale of a drugged out, corrupt and abusive cop brilliantly played by Harvey Keitel. A dark and disturbing film, it is a tale of redemption but remains unremittingly bleak. This film, which according to director Werner Herzog is neither a remake or a sequel, shares very little with the original. It is a drug fuelled epic journey through the back-streets and bayous of Louisiana as a darkly comic Nicholas Cage, the bad lieutenant of the title tries to solve the drug related homicide of a family of African immigrants.

Where Keitel's Lieutenant was menacing, Cage is more prosaic. Both are corrupt and deeply flawed characters but Cage's portrayal is the more sympathetic. The story is a simple one. During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Terrence McDonagh (Cage) of the New Orleans PD finds a prisoner has been left behind in one of the City's jails and in attempt to rescue him injures his back permanently. Fast forward 6 months and a painkiller addicted McDonagh is investigating the aforementioned homicide. Of course, the painkillers are no longer enough and Terrence begins using Cocaine and Heroin to ease his pain. An increasingly addled and addicted Mcdonagh must try and solve the murders while staying one step ahead of his gambling debts, the Mafia, his fellow cops, his various addictions and his troubled prostitute girlfriend played by the wonderful Eva Mendes. 

So far so bleak but the brilliance of this is the dark humour which Herzog finds in all of this, which keeps this a roller coaster ride. Cage is epic, giving his best performance in at least a decade as the degenerate cop who ultimately pulls everything together while swaggering across the screen with a .44 Magnum in his belt. Epic film-making.

One of my favourite films of the last year, this is an excellent and adult look at addiction and how it can change people. Ultimately, McDonagh never overcomes his addiction but seems to succeed in spit of it. 

Any review of this film would not be complete without a comparison to the original. This is a very different beast. Abel Ferrara and Werner Herzog are as different as it is possible for directors to be. Ferrara specialises in dark thrashy cult tales of the underbelly of his home town, New York City. Herzog is the darling of independent cinema, the man who Francois Truffaut called, "the most important film director alive". While they are both excellent explorations of the same themes, Herzog's is the more watchable and enjoyable as it keeps its mind on the plot and characters and as far out as Cage gets, he pulls it back in the end. Give it a chance, its worth it.