Sin #52: Bad Cop Routine

Picture this: You’ve been assigned to write a movie that features corrupt cops, drug dealers, prostitutes and a sleazy location (preferably in a decaying city), got it?

You might first want to introduce the characters. The hero could be a lieutenant with a bad drug habit who has a complicated relationship with a hooker (let’s make her preferably Latina). The cop begins to develop a partnership with the local drug dealers (preferably Afro-Americans) who use him as leverage in the precinct; slowly but surely he begins to lose his mind in a spiral of addiction. Pretty generic stuff, right?

Cop movies are a dime a dozen in Hollywood; most of them recycle clichés and formulas that strip them of any kind of originality, although every once in a while they can be a lot of fun (like with “Training Day” and Denzel Washington’s Oscar winning performance). Werner Herzog’s “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans”, however, doesn’t really resemble any of the other cop movies I’ve seen even though it features all of the elements previously mentioned. To begin with, Herzog is not a conventional filmmaker by any means and often deals with characters on the verge of madness. With this in mind, he lets Nicolas Cage roam wild in an exquisite performance of over-the top extremeness that at times borders on camp but that never breaks the reality of the situation. Now, about Cage; even though he has hurt his career by appearing in real turkeys lately (like “The Wicker Man”, “Ghost Rider” or “Bangkok Dangerous”), in the right movies (like “Adaptation”, “Matchstick Men” or “Bringing out the Dead”) he can be fearless, poignant and unforgettable. In this movie he is working without a safety net and relishing every minute of it; it’s really a joy to watch the character implode. The rest of the cast also works within the boundaries of clichés but always on the risky edge, making them more real and human (Jennifer Coolidge, in an unusual role, and Eva Mendes are very good).

There are two particular elements (besides the acting) that make “Bad Lieutenant” very different from your usual cop story. The first one is the location; by setting the characters in a devastated post-Katrina New Orleans Herzog has stripped the glossiness of cities like New York or Los Angeles (where these stories usually take place). The second element are those damn iguanas that fill the screen in intense close-ups that occupy the foreground as the characters mind their business.

According to Cage, Herzog owns those iguanas and really wanted them on the film (even though they weren’t in the script). As a staring iguana breaks the fourth wall we wonder about their meaning, are they there to add a surreal oddity to the film or merely for us to visualize Cage’s hallucinations?

It’s these kinds of puzzlements that make “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” such an odd and compelling movie; we don’t know what to make of it but we can’t forget about it either. Watching it we really sense that there’s nothing predictable in its story, especially about its ending that doesn’t go for the obvious solution but instead takes a more realistic approach (that final sequence left me with a giddy grin).

By the way, even though a while ago there was some controversy about this movie being some sort of remake of Abel Ferrara’s film starring Harvey Keitel (also titled “Bad Lieutenant”), it’s safe to say that there’s no semblance to the previous version except for its title. This is a Werner Herzog movie all the way.