Product: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans [Blu-ray] (2009)
Rating: 5.0
Nicholas Cage At Long Last Returns To His Roots--with Werner Herzog
We all know the Nicholas Cage of recent years who seemingly has made one hackneyed movie after another just to indulge yet another big pay check and spending spree. Those of us who had been following him from the beginning, who loved his quirky indie films with offbeat directors, were horrified at what he'd become. Now he has teamed with the ultimate indie, offbeat director, Werner Herzog, to reclaim his roots. I believe that both Herzog and Cage have made a movie that is an extended metaphor about post Katrina New Orleans. Cage IS that post Katrina beleaguered city. He starts out the film injured and heroic and then zig zags through the rest of the film exhibiting the behavior of a post traumatic stress disorder patient who is untreated, like such a soldier from Vietnam or Iraq. For Herzog's part, he's always been about imagery and metaphors and he doesn't disappoint here in rendering the ultimate imagery and metaphor for post Katrina New Orleans. This is a very different movie from Abel Ferrara's movie starring Harvey Kietel set in New York. That film was a true character study of a really bad cop who worked for the NYPD. It was also excellent but very different from this film. Is Cage Herzog's new alter ego Klaus Kinski (his late leading man)? I doubt it. Although the two are an excellent pairing, Kinski and Herzog were a one off as a movie making team.