Bad Lieutenant - Port of Call: New Orleans

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans Poster

I wasn't impressed when I first heard about this movie. I didn't care for the last Nicolas Cage movie I saw, I wasn't really interested in another movie about bad cops, and the fancy title made it sound like they were trying to dress up a bad movie. But then I saw that it was directed by Werner Herzog, and I thought, well maybe it will be alright. And it was.

Bad Lieutenant - Port of Call New Orleans

We've got Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes and Val Kilmer, though Val's role is small and inconsequential. Cage, or rather his character, is nuts. He hurt his back doing something foolish, suffers from chronic pain, eats all the pain killers he can get his hands on as well as snorting cocaine on a regular basis, and he looks and acts like it. In other words, he looks like s*** and acts like a complete wacko.

He is beginning to look like a complete disaster. He manages to run up a big enough debt to his bookie that he gets cut off, he gets some big shot politician so pissed off he is sending some thugs to collect tribute for an insult, and he gets his gun taken away.

In spite of all the drugs he is taking, or perhaps because of it, he manages to orchestrate the actions of all these people who are bothering him so that they are put in their places and he comes out smelling like a rose. It was really very clever, too clever for real life, but, hey, that's why we go to the movies.

Update February 2017 replaced missing picture and corrected a couple of typo's.