Product: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans [Blu-ray] (2009)
Rating: 3.0
Good
Is it a great film? No. Is it a fun film? Yes. Is it worth seeing? Yes. Is Cage good in it? Maybe, because little acting chops are needed. Then, again, that's the point of satire, to show that little effort is needed in mimicking the crap that passes for quality, in most instances. The DVD, put out by First Look Studios, shows the film in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, and there are only a few DVD features. An audio commentary is not among them. This is a shame, for with a good prompter, Herzog is amongst the best film commentarians going. What we do get are two trailers for the film, photos from the shoot, by Herzog's wife, and a slapped together `Making Of' documentary that is not really a documentary, just captured footage. Peter Zeitlinger's cinematography is as good as it's always been, in these such films. The musical scoring, by Herzog and Mark Isham, is also good, and quite feral and raw. The focus on odd bits, such as breakdancing ghosts of dead mobsters, invisible iguanas on coffee tables, snakes that slither through flooded prisons, and an alligator that eyes its run over and dying mate from its own eye level, are just some of the odd views the film gives. Even the actors, in minor roles, don't really act, they just are, and become as iconographically symbolic as the animals.Yet, the film has power, because, as Serpico showed, there are few things more `real' in film than cops who abuse their power. Yes, Cage's Terry becomes almost clown-like, but the things he does are done every day, in every major police force, all around the world. The Blue Wall Of Silence protects the scumbags. Terry's is the Type 1 corrupt cop. They are up to 5 % of all cops. Type 2 is the cop who does not commit brazenly illegal acts, but writes false tickets to meet quotas, harasses drivers, and takes bribes (in the form of money or female's phone numbers) to drop charges against them. They are up to 80 % of the police force. Type 3 is the most prevalent corruption, and they are the 99+% of cops who look the other way at Types 1 and 2. (obviously there's overlap between the three types) So, claims that the film is not realistic are wrong; it's merely stylized realism. And, the film it actually shares the most, thematically, with is Curtis Hanson's 1997 masterpiece, L.A. Confidential, which also focuses on corrupt cops and an execution in a home. But Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call: New Orleans really has only one kinship, and that's with the many oddball films in Herzog's own canon. My guess is that fictive masterpieces like he did in the first two decades of his career, are simply beyond Herzog now, and that the best we can get, not unlike Woody Allen, are flashes of brilliance, and the occasional mesmerizing small documentary. Good enough for most filmmakers, but coming from Herzog, it's hard to put aside the notion that his career could have been even more, could have transfigured the medium to an even greater degree. Nonetheless, films like this will suffice, just as they will entertain and dog the viewer with a mind demanding more than just the Hollywood formulae of yore. See it, and move somewards from your self. Watching Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call: New Orleans, is there any reason not to?