Today's Viewing & Review: The Bad Lieutenant - Port Of Call: New Orleans

The Bad Lieutenant – Port Of Call: New Orleans

This isn’t a sequel and it isn’t a remake but it’s thematically similar to Abel Ferrara’s 1992 dirty cop drama. Stylistically, it’s completely different. Excess is very much the key to Werner Herzog’s take on it and, as such, what to judge it on becomes murkier than a Louisiana bayou.

Opening immediately post-Katrina, we’re introduced to this film’s Bad Lieutenant, Terence McDonagh (Nicolas Cage), and it’s not immediately clear why he’s earned the eponymous moniker. The worst he seems to do is stealing a few nudie photos of a colleague’s wife. As he begins the investigation of a murdered Senegalese family, he rapidly becomes embroiled in a series of potentially fatal situations of his own causing. It’s only then we’re introduced to his unorthodox methods and catalogue of vices; which range from smoking crack and demanding sex as a bribe to getting impatient at waiting times in a pharmacy.

Werner Herzog has been known to nurture lunacy in his actors and he certainly does nothing to rein-in what has become Nicolas Cage’s trademark manic style of late. If anything, it would appear he’s asked him to amp it up. It’s practically played for comedy with Cage’s performance so ridiculous that it’s strangely watchable. He hunches his shoulders, he pulls faces, he screeches and he delivers the most ludicrous of dialogue (“I snorted what I thought was coke. It turned out to be heroin. I gotta be at work in an hour”) with ill-fitting brio. There’s no restraint in his interpretation. Whereas Harvey Keitel approached his similar role with a level of internalisation, Cage approaches it with all the subtlety of a raving pantomime villain.

It lurches from scene to scene with little in the way of coherence. It has to be assumed that Herzog is doing all this deliberately. The erratic style fits the character and vice versa. When, apropos of nothing, he decides to leave a scene by focusing on an extreme close-up of an alligator and following it at ground level as it scuttles off, you go along with it. The seemingly random is commonplace throughout the film from hallucinatory iguanas to Turner & Hooch-style dogsitting dilemmas.

The film has the appearance of having been shot fast and loose. There’s nothing grand about the cinematography and it suits the frenetic style. If anything, the film could do with a sizeable chunk of it judiciously pruned. There’s often too much going on with characters like the Lieutenant’s prostitute girlfriend (Eva Mendes) getting lost in the confusion. Solid actors like Val Kilmer and Michael Shannon are reduced to cameos and wasted as little more than expository characters for Cage to bounce off.

As a thriller, it’s never gripping and as a character study it’s lacking any depth. Once you’ve been introduced to his ‘badness’, the novelty wears off and you’re left with a character reduced to acting like a petulant child and developing a Jimmy Stewart accent after three-quarters of the film. It’s completely unsure of what it wants to be, but that’s part of its shambling charm.

If entering into the spirit of it and accepting it as deliberately ludicrous, it’s a partial success. As McDonagh unravels and creates a perfect storm, while engaging in patently ridiculous acts like torturing elderly women, it’s hard not to laugh. When it delivers what may be the most wondrously neat conclusion of all time, it’s hard to interpret its intentions any other way.

It may be lacking in focus, but not in vision and it certainly has to be treated as a wholly separate entity to Ferrara’s film. It’s never po-faced and Herzog and Cage have been undoubtedly brave to interpret the material in this way.

It’s so nuts it might just be brilliant.

3/5

Read my extended and reworked review over at www.reelscotland.com/?p=2687

Tweet

Today's Viewing & Reviews: Precious + Bad Lieutenant

Precious (Based On The Novel ‘Push’ By Sapphire)

A hard-hitting abuse drama, starring Mariah Carey. That’s not a summation that inspires confidence. It comes with preconceived ideas and expectations of an insipid ‘inspirational’ struggle against the odds. However, it’s garnering plaudits aplenty so I figured the majority can’t be that far wrong. They weren’t. Precious (to use its colloquial title) is a very fine piece of work indeed.

The home-life of Claireece Precious Jones is pretty harrowing; twice pregnant to her father, emotionally and physically abusive mother, impoverished. Add to that the fact she’s severely overweight, illiterate and bullied. Prospects don’t look good. That’s where the film wrong-foots you, it’s not necessarily about overcoming adversity and the plight of this poor girl. It’s about an ordinary girl in extraordinary circumstances, enduring supreme hardship. It’s not constantly trying to ram a message down your throat. The fact that there are probably numerous Preciouses out there isn’t a cause for a crusade. As an audience, we’re not being held accountable.

Precious herself is not a character who requires our pity. Sure, she’s got a pretty awful life but she’s choosing to do the best she can to get herself out of that. It may not present her as happy with her lot but it never presents her as lacking in spirit and prone to conceding defeat. In that way, she is inspirational. The performance of newcomer Gabourey Sidibe is at once naturalistic and utterly compelling. The scenes of her bonding with new classmates seem entirely legitimate with a sense of authenticity lacking in other films which tread the same ground.

Although inevitably erring towards it at times, the film tries its utmost to avoid the clichés which plague the genre. The music is never downbeat even as misery upon misery is heaped on. Even the bleakest scene is underscored by the most uplifting (often gospel) music. It’s decidedly low-key and avoids becoming too overblown. The scenes of abuse never become ‘misery porn’ and the flights of fancy which take place in Precious’ mind when faced with extreme hardship have the opposite effect, merely foregrounding the juxtaposition of dreamworld idyll and harsh reality.

Director Lee Daniels has a keen eye and every scene is imbued with interesting visuals and kinetic cinematography – but never to the detriment of story or character development. Mo’Nique is the most pantomime of the characters as Precious’ vile mother, although later scenes reveal a depth that wasn’t seen in the earlier acts. The appearances of Mariah Carey and cock-rocker Lenny Kravitz, while momentarily distracting, are not ostentatious and ol’ leather trousers actually provides one of the films only true moments of levity. It’s not entirely without shards of light among the murk. It takes a brave film to present such uncompromising hardship yet still have the time (and audacity) to include a throwaway scene making light of Precious’ malapropian misnaming of ‘incest’, without appearing tasteless.

At times more horrific than many horror films, it’s not a film which offers easy answers or easy solutions – which wasn’t what I expected from it. At all.

(High) 4/5


Bad Lieutenant

Put the controversy to one side which, from today’s perspective, is pretty inconsequential anyway. For anyone unfamiliar, this is a character study. Harvey Keitel is the unnamed dirty cop of the title, but his dirtiness goes far beyond typical depictions of police corruption; he smokes crack, commits sex crimes, gambles, boozes hard, extorts money and pilfers cocaine from crime scenes. As if that weren’t enough he couldn’t care less about his role as a protector of society. He’d rather discuss sports fixtures than investigate a double murder and is entirely happy with letting criminals go free if it meets his own needs.

It’s a virtuoso performance from Keitel, from his pained primal yelps to his narcotic-induced stupor. Never afraid to take it to extremes and, even for an actor previously uninhibited in this area, is unafraid of airing of his old fella when it’s needed. The depictions of his drug-addled haze are well-realised and inventive each and every time they regularly appear. The film never departs from the central character for more than a few seconds and the camera is unwavering as it focuses on Keitel. Long static shots add to the sense of discomfort as he goes about his routine. Even the contrasting scenes of his family life have a pervading sense of menace which could erupt at any time.

For all cop films, as irregular as this or otherwise, there’s a central crime which the film is hung around. Here, co-writer/director Abel Ferrara almost childishly chooses the most provocative crime in a deliberate attempt to foreground the film’s controversial nature; the rape of a young nun. The religious complexion of this crime allows the film to introduce themes of redemption and a constant ramming of ecclesiastical iconography, which is overplayed, but then the entire film is caricatured to the point of excess. Despite never appearing to tacitly chastise the character and his actions, there’s only really one possible outcome for the Lieutenant and even an epiphany may not be enough to prevent it.

Ferrara’s direction is visually wondrous with particularly extravagant lighting and a measured, precise movement that allows the film room to breathe. With no score to speak of this combines with, and adds to, the level of unease the film creates. There’s a baseball subplot which runs through it, with sports commentary occasionally replacing music cues as a by-proxy means of manipulation.

Despite a few leery scenes, it’s not quite the controversy magnet it’s made out to be (highlighted by the fact it’s now an unlikely franchise). Abel Ferrara’s excessive manner at the least ensures that it’s creatively uncompromised with a distinct arthouse sensibility that’s liable to disappoint anyone looking for a laddish thrill-ride.

4/5

Tweet