Product: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans [Blu-ray] (2009)
Rating: 4.0
"His soul is still dancing!"
While I'm not sure anything could equal Abel Ferrara's masterpiece "Bad Lieutenant" (and the viewer should not go into this movie expecting that), Herzog's "Port of Call New Orleans" is more than worth the time of those interested in seeing the offbeat director's skillful use of Nicolas Cage as Terence McDonaugh, a corrupt New Orleans detective with so many life threatening problems (drug addiction, gambling addiction, debt to mafioso) that the threat of immanent death is something that he's accustomed to.While none of this particularly shocked me (Nicolas Cage has talent but I could never buy him as a genuine tough guy), I found it hilarious, uncanny, and filled with mystery in a really strange way. In the same vein as Ferrara's tour de force--an absolute wretch looking for redemption or at least occasionally trying not to be a monster--and employing extreme surreality to a purpose. The love among the damned bit (Terence has a drug addict prostitute for a girlfriend who looks a little too good for her job, played by the gorgeous Eva Mendes) is not cliche and Herzog uses it to comical effect more than anything else. The sense of displacement and dislocation in Terence's narcotic addled, deranged psyche is used to maximum effect in bits of dialogue that are priceless. A mobster obviously modeled on the late John Gotti fondles his girlfriend, threatening him viciously, and then says: "When one touches another physically it is a reminder, Terence, that we are not alone. Not completely."His anger at the elderly obviously has something to do with his reformed alcoholic father. The linear plot of the movie which is the least important aspect of the film is thus: Terence is enraged by the brutal gangland slaying of a family and a little girl over some money. He reads in the little girl's diary: "When my fish sleeps, it dreams." This is a recurrent theme and sets him on an inner quest, when he isn't quaffing drugs from wayward youngsters at nightclubs. Because of the death of this child and her note he seeks to understand his own youth and come to terms with his almost certain death. He returns home to his father and searches for the spoon he once found as a child while looking for booty like a Pirate. He will "sleep with the fishes", yes, but will he dream? Will there be any innocence or purity left in his wretched life?The way he apprehends those responsible for the family's death is so confusing that occasionally the viewer wonders whether he has become entirely depraved. But no, his "lucky crackpipe" saves the day. Is his success at the end a dream? Did he actually die? Did the man he saved at the beginning get him help, or are they both "sleeping like the fishes" in the closing sequence?Brad Dourif plays a low level loan shark for the mob, but he is really Terence's priest. He urges Terence to do something to save himself and echoes with his own performance the Catholicism of Ferrara's film. Val Kilmer is hilarious as his partner who is just a guy's guy and wants to help out his friend at any cost, but is also badly influenced by him. A quirky gem, cult classic at the least.