Product: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans [Blu-ray] (2009)
Rating: 4.0
Werner Herzog's latest hypnotic and strange portrait of a man on the edge
Visionary filmmaker Werner Herzog and Nicholas Cage take on what looks like an ordinary police procedural and turn it into something nearly as hypnotic and strange as the megalomaniacal meltdown of the conquistador played by Klaus Kinski inAguirre, the Wrath of God. A recurrent theme of Herzog's work is the breakdown of social norms under extreme conditions, of war or conflict or survival. Or you might say he's interested in the ways we manage to maintain a paradoxical commitment to ceremony and convention even in extreme situations where the realities that support them and the ideals they are supposed to sustain have broken down.Cage plays a New Orleans police detective, promoted to Lieutenant after a reluctant act of bravery caused him to be injured on the job in the aftermath of Katrina. His resultant back pains help explain his addiction to pain pills and other illegal "medications," but it is the paradoxical atmosphere of general permissiveness and tolerance of eccentricity combined with strict regulations that seems to push him over the edge and out of control. The style of the film likewise alternates between fairly conventional police drama and the over-the-top extreme of drug-addled subjectivity.Break dancing souls, hallucinatory iquanas, grieving alligators. What do fish dream of, anyhow? An always intriguing, darkly comic (indeed, often bizarrely hilarious) and strange film. Must see for fans of Herzog and of visionary cinema that pushes against the boundaries of the conventional and familiar. I'd say, also, that anyone who lovesBreaking Badis likely to dig the humor and off-kilter vibe of Herzog's Bad Lieutenant. Generally speaking, though, fans of Nick Cage's more popular fare would do best to avoid this unless they know what they're getting into. He's shown an ability to go unhinged and on the edge before (e.g.Wild at HeartorAdaptationorLeaving Las Vegas), but his performance here reaches new depths of depravity and darkness.