Monday 8 March 2010

[Film] Bad Lieutenants

Contains mild spoilers... Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans is a joke. And I don’t mean that necessarily in a bad way. I mean, that’s the only way to explain it. It’s not a comedy – not exactly – but it’s Herzog’s joke at the expense of Hollywood. It must be. Herzog, of course, is mad. Not mad in the same way that Lars von Trier is mad – not bad mad. He’s just a wild and crazy guy who rails against Bonanza and eats shoes. And now he’s remade one of the most disturbing films of the nineties as a Hollywood pisstake. Unsurprisingly, Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant has very little to do with Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant. It has a corrupt, drug-addled cop at the centre of it, but that aside, it's more like a wildly distorted echo than a direct remake. Ferrara’s film is genuinely shocking – still shocking, almost 20 years on. In it a nun is raped by two men. They also use a crucifix. Harvey Keitel’s lieutenant meanwhile is genuinely disturbed. Aside from the drugs, the sex and the gambling, the cursing of Christ and the standing around naked whilst whining like a wounded dog, there is also the infamous masturbation scene, which brings a whole new meaning to the term 'carjacking'. The man is a moral train-wreck and the film as a whole is uncomfortable and difficult. 


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9 comments:

Anonymous said...

It sounds brilliant, it's on the list. I've got Aguirre, the Wrath of God on HD and am waiting for an opportune time to watch it. Is there ever an opportune time to watch Werner Hertzog?

La Bête said...

I really want to see the one he made about Klaus Kinski. I'm bloody going to too.

Anonymous said...

I can't wait to see this, but first I'm going to watch the original 1992 version starring Harvey Keitel. I adore Harvey. He plays Gene Hunt in the American version of Life On Mars. Brilliant.

Maria in Oregon

La Bête said...

I watched the original again after watching this one. It really is bitterly uncompromising. Harvey Keitel is magnificent, innhe?

Swineshead said...

I stopped reading when you start talking about what happens at the end. Why would you - a reasonably intelligent man - do that?

La Bête said...

Apologies. Amended.

Swineshead said...

You are forgiven. I would suggest that you suffered a brief Kermode Malfunction.

Swineshead said...

I do like Cage in jumped-up-mental mode though. I wish they'd make a sequel to Leaving Las Vegas.

Actually, make that a prequel.

CarolH said...

Isn't that him who did 'Grizzly Man'? - now that was a weird film.