Product: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans [Blu-ray] (2009)
Rating: 1.0
Shockingly Bad Bad Lieutenant
In this utterly horrendous flick, a slack-jawed, or, as Springsteen would say, dull-eyed and empty-faced Nick Cage lumbers through a comically bad script in what may soon be deemed the worst movie of the decade.From what Wikipedia tells me, director Werner Herzog seems to be a rather eccentric character who makes obscure movies. Throw Val Kilmer into the mix, and you have a crew that defines all that is wrong with Hollywood -- lazy, bloated, and contemptuous of its audience.Much of "Bad Lieutenant II" has the feel of any one of a number of recent video games, and some scenes look that they came right out of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. You have the cardboard thugs, the cynical cops, and the tough but caring black police chiefs.The blending of these two genres, gaming and film, is a sad evolution in entertainment, and BL II looks to be one of many new films that will blur the lines so that Hollywood studios and game production companies can cut costs. Instead of going straight to video, movies like this will go straight to video game -- that is how bad this film is.The brain-dead plot, the absurd dialog, you name -- this film has it. I know Nick Cage has some financial problems involving bad real estate deals, and some guy was stalking him, but he appears to be at the end of his rope here, desperate for a paycheck. The same could be said about Val Kilmer.But I'd have to single out the writer for absolute condemnation. For example, in one scene, Cage gets his weapon (a massive .45 that he usually keeps, holster-less, jammed in his waistband, awfully close to his left testicle) confiscated by what equates to some goons from Internal Affairs. He is relegated to the evidence room, where he can plunder the stash of confiscated drugs. TWO SCENES later, he is running around, with that same weapon longed in his crotch. Such is the level of contempt Cage and his crew has for the poor souls that they can sucker into watching this mess.I guess that Herzog, et al, assume that we are all dope-addled retards, like the character Cage plays in BL II (perhaps he is not acting), and we won't notice gaping holes in the plot, wildly absurd exchanges of banal chatter ("Do fish dream?"), camera work worthy of GTA 2, and corny, contrived scenes (the junkie cop is stuck with an adorable dog, his whore girlfriend, and a key witness to a homicide, driving around in his police cruiser, trying to get square with his bookie; or something like that...)If you get the urge to sample this pile steaming garbage, do yourself a favor -- rent the original Bad Lieutenant and watch that masterpiece until the urge passes.