The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Werner Herzog, 2009)

[statsman]

Well, it's a different film than the first. I was blown away by the Ferrara film, finding it to be perhaps the best visualization of the concept of Christian grace ever shown. In its own way, it's as spiritual as "Tender Mercies". I've told my Christian friends that if they can make it through the darkness in this film there is an amazing message (few are willing when I tell them what's in it). One of the things that made it work was the utter degradation of keitel's character. The Herzog film seems to give Cage a reason for his addiction, and he seems to actually be trying to solve a case, which Keitel's character was not too terribly interested in doing

Spoiler

(except to get the reward to save his life).

Well, it's Herzog's movie, and he can take it where he likes. It would probably be a bad idea to explore the ground Ferrara covered.

[Cronenfly]

I was pretty worried about this whole enterprise from the start, but it looks like Herzog played it smart (if the trailer is to be trusted) in deviating almost entirely from the original's style/content, which I think was the only reasonable way to go about such a ludicrous enterprise as making a sequel to the Ferrara. This looks like it could be the purest Cage comedy vehicle since The Wicker Man (with the added bonus that this looks intentionally humourous), and if it helps Werner get a project of actual quality off the ground, all the more power to it (and him).

[Malick663]

I honestly have no idea whether I think that trailer is amazing or downright horrid. It doesn't feel like a Herzog film at all. I have a feeling he just took the paycheck and had some fun with it on this one. Onward to "My Son My Son, What Have Ye Done?" for me.

[ivuernis]

Guardian gives it a thumbs up

[Zumpano]

Herzog was on Charlie Rose yesterday and stated that this role was Nic Cage's best acting/performance to date. Can't wait.

[rs98762001]

The reception to the film in Venice was surprisingly positive. Not so much for My Son, My Son...

[hot_locket]

Not so much for My Son, My Son...

Funny, that's the one I think most people were expecting to be better.

[bigP]

It appears My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done gets a big thumbs up from David Jenkins at Time Out, who surprisingly travels a completely different path from the majority, describing Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans as "supremely duff" whilst proclaiming My Son, My Son... to be "sublime...And what a surprise it was." Here's the link

[knives]

Has anyone liked both yet?

[dadaistnun]

Manohla Dargis, reporting from Toronto:

My favorite discovery at Toronto, however, is the deliriously unhinged “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” which was met with laughter and audible gasps during its initial press screening. Although it bears some resemblance to the original “Bad Lieutenant,” Abel Ferrara’s 1992 grungy classic about a drug-addled cop, Mr. Herzog’s redo is its own beast. Nicolas Cage, delivering his loosest, twitchiest, most furiously engaged performance since “Vampire’s Kiss” (1988), in which he swallowed a cockroach for his art, plays the title character, a detective who’s badder and madder than most. Written by William Finkelstein, a veteran television writer (“L.A. Law”), the plot hinges on familiar dirty business (a multiple murder, drug deals) that becomes increasingly irrelevant as the mood and filmmaking heat up.

In this brightly lighted nightmare, a post-Katrina New Orleans that might have been conceived by Hieronymus Bosch but could come to the screen only through the feverish imaginings of Mr. Herzog, a dead man’s soul dances near his body and googly-eyed iguanas trade seemingly knowing looks with the pop-eyed lieutenant. To watch Mr. Cage melt with pleasure as he lights up his “lucky crack pipe” or seize up with spasmodic giggles, is to understand that Mr. Herzog has again found a performer as committed to representing unspeakable human will as Klaus Kinski, the star of Herzog masterworks like “Aguirre, the Wrath of God.” Here Mr. Cage and Mr. Herzog take you into a hell that leads straight to movie heaven.

She also calls it, "one of the best of [Herzog's] career."

[hot_locket]

She also calls it, "one of the best of [Herzog's] career."

Jesus.

All I can say, really.

[RagingNoodles]

Roger Ebert:

I saw three new movies on Monday. Each one could have been the best film of the day. I can't choose among them, so alphabetically: Werner Herzog's "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans," Atom Egoyan's "Chloe" and Rodrigo Garcia's "Mother and Child." A story involving a cop uncontrollably strung out on drugs. A story involving a wife who meets a hooker. A story about three woman whose lives are shaped by the realities of adoption. Three considerable filmmakers. Three different tones. Three stories that improvise on genres instead of following them. Three titles that made me wonder, why can't every day be like this?

Nicolas Cage and Werner Herzog were surely destined to work together. Radical talents are drawn to one another. Cage tends to exceed the limitations of a role, Herzog tends to exceed the limitations of film itself. Knowing nothing about conditions during the shoot, my guess is they found artistic harmony. If not, they ended up hardly on speaking terms. Either way would have worked.

"Bad Lieutenant" has essentially nothing in common with Abel Ferrara's great 1992 film except for a title. Comparisons are pointless. The performances of Harvey Keitel and Nicolas Cage are both so extreme they're originals. Cage plays a New Orleans cop who at the outset of the film toys with the fears of a convict locked in a cell who believe he will drown beneath the rising flood waters of Hurricane Katrina. He toys, the bastard, but he doesn't let him drown, and ends by injuring his own back.

His doctor puts him on Vicodin for pain that may last for the rest of his life. The problem is, if you are on Vicodin for the rest of your life, you are going to need more and more Vicodin and the rest of your life may turn out to take less time than you expect. Cage moves into a mode where he consumes any drugs he can get his hands on--painkillers, cocaine, heroin, you name it. These he obtains any way he can, including theft, confiscation, and raiding the police evidence room. He becomes more and more reckless and desperate. All this connects with a gruesome homicide he's investigating, and some very dangerous people.

Another director would have approached this as a genre picture. Herzog envelops the genre and transcends it. His fascination involves the far shores of the human personality. Nicolas Cage is as good as anyone since Klaus Kinski at portraying a man whose head is exploding. It's a hypnotic performance, underlined by the gritty cinematography of frequent Herzog collaborator Peter Zeitlinger.

In a film with many extraordinary shots, there is one that will inspire much discussion. The bad lieutenant is in a room with two iguanas on a table--never mind why. Another director might have used them as a colorful background detail. Herzog finds them irresistable. He frames them in the foreground for what seems an inordinate amount of time, with Cage in the background, sometimes looking at them ominously out of the corner of his eye. We realize, My god! The iguana, to the extent that any iguana can, has Nicolas Cage's eyes!

[MichaelB]

God I hope this line:

Nicolas Cage is as good as anyone since Klaus Kinski at portraying a man whose head is exploding.

...ends up on the poster.

But I'm guessing not.

[RagingNoodles]

Roger Ebert Full Review :

Werner Herzog's "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans" creates a dire portrait of a rapist, murderer, drug addict, corrupt cop and degenerate paranoid who's very apprehensive about iguanas. It places him in a devastated New Orleans not long after Hurricane Katrina. It makes no attempt to show that city of legends in a flattering light. And it gradually reveals itself as a sly comedy about a snaky but courageous man.

No one is better at this kind of performance than Nicolas Cage. He's a fearless actor. He doesn't care if you think he goes over the top. If a film calls for it, he will crawl to the top hand over hand with bleeding fingernails. Regard him in films so various as "Wild at Heart" and "Leaving Las Vegas." He and Herzog were born to work together. They are both made restless by caution.

In the gallery of bad cops, Terence McDonagh belongs in the first room. Everyone will think of Harvey Keitel's lieutenant in Abel Ferrara's masterpiece "Bad Lieutenant" (1993) for the obvious reason. I hope this film inspires you to seek out that one. It deserves to be sought. Ferrara is Shakespearean in his tragedy, Herzog more like Cormac McCarthy. Sometimes on the road to hell you can't help but laugh.

In a city deserted by many of its citizens and much of its good fortune, McDonagh roams the midnight streets without supervision. He Serves and Protects himself. He is the Law, and the Law exists for his personal benefit. Lurking in his prowler outside a nightclub, he sees a young couple emerge and follows them to an empty parking lot. He stops them, searches them, finds negligible drugs on the man, begins the process of arrest. The man pleads. He's afraid his father will find out. He offers a bribe. McDonagh isn't interested in money. He wants the drugs and the girl, whom he rapes, excited that her boyfriend is watching.

The film's only similarities with the Ferrara film are in the title and the presentation of a wholly immoral drug addict. It's not what a movie is about but how it's about it. Ferrara regards his lieutenant without mercy. Herzog can be as forgiving as God. An addict in need can be capable of about anything. He will betray family, loved ones, duty, himself. He's driven. Because addiction is an illness (although there is debate), we mustn't be too quick to judge. Drugs and alcohol are both terrible, but drugs can drive a victim more urgently to ruin.

Herzog shows McDonagh lopsided from back pain. He begins with prescription Vicodin and moves quickly to cocaine. As a cop, he develops sources. He steals from other addicts and from dealers. In the confusion after Katrina, he steals from a police evidence room. George Carlin said, "What does cocaine feel like? It makes you feel like some more cocaine."

McDonagh has a girlfriend named Frankie (Eva Mendes). She's a hooker. He's OK with this. He gives her drugs, she sometimes has them for him. They share something an addict craves: sympathy and understanding. They stand together against the horrors. He's also close to his 60-ish father, Pat (Tom Bower), not close to Pat's 40-ish partner Genevieve (Jennifer Coolidge). His father has a history with AA. Genevieve is a bosomy all-day beer drinker. They live in a slowly decaying rural manse somewhere in the parish. Pat knows what to look for in his son and sees it.

Colorful characters enrich McDonagh's tunnel-visioned life. There's hip-hop star Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner as Big Fate, a kingpin who holds the key to the execution of five Nigerian drug dealers. Fairuza Balk as a cop and McDonagh's sometime lover. Brad Dourif as his bookie (he gambles, too). Val Kilmer as his partner, in an uncharacteristically laid-back performance. Maybe we couldn't take Cage and Kilmer both cranked up to 11. Bower plays McDonagh's father as a troubled man but one with good instincts. Coolidge, with great screen presence as always, changes gears and plays a MI-wouldn't-LF.

The details of the crime need not concern us. Just admire the feel of the film. Peter Zeitlinger's cinematography creates a New Orleans unleavened by the picturesque. Herzog as always pokes around for the odd detail. Everyone is talking about the shots of the iguanas and the alligator, staring with cold reptilian eyes. Who else but Herzog would hold on their gaze? Who else would foreground them, placing the action in the background? Who but Cage could regard an iguana sideways in a look of suspicion and disquiet? You need to keep an eye on an iguana. The bastards are always up to something.

"Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans" is not about plot, but about seasoning. Like New Orleans cuisine, it finds that you can put almost anything in a pot if you add the right spices and peppers and simmer it long enough.

Yet surely "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans" is an odd title? Let me give you my fantasy about that. Herzog agrees with Ed Pressman to do a remake of the 1993 film, which Pressman also produced. Pressman is no fool and knows a Werner Herzog remake will be nothing like the original. Abel Ferrara is outraged, as well he might be; Martin Scorsese picked "Bad Lieutenant" as one of the 10 best films of the 1990s.

"Gee, I dunno," Pressman says. "Maybe we should change the title. How about talking a line from the screenplay? How about calling it 'Port of Call, New Orleans' "?

"We will compromise," Herzog says with that Germanic precision he uses when explaining something he needs to make clear. "We will call it 'Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans.' " He's not going to back down from Ferrara. These are proud men.

[Adam]

I think very apt is this from Ebert:

"'Bad Lieutenant' has essentially nothing in common with Abel Ferrara's great 1992 film except for a title. Comparisons are pointless."

And it doesn't even really share the title, which everyone (even this thread) gets wrong. On screen the title is:
The Bad Lieutenant
Port of Call: New Orleans

I think the additional "The" is a fine and ridiculous touch that some how adds to the pulpiness.

For me the most interest element of the film (besides the reptile POVs), unmentioned in any review, is the social satire of the ending.

Spoiler

In very short order, Cage avoids punishment for all his misdeeds, and is actually rewarded with a promotion. In other words, one could infer that one must go over-the-top and misbehave as he does in order to get ahead, and thsu extrapolate that all those who have gotten ahead have done such things - addictions, allegiances with evil, betrayal, etc. Think of it in comparison to somehing like Genet's 'The Balcony." These happen in such ridiculous fashion, one right after another at the police station, that I think they are clearly not to be read as serious events - they happen almost too quicly for me, but I think it's clear that that is the intent.

[J Adams]

Wow I disagree that it has nothing in common with the Ferrara film. There are some similar narrative and thematic elements. And the ending is a lot more fun if you've seen the Ferrara.

[Brian C]

Tough to know what Herzog was after here. In some respects, it feels like Encounters at the End of the World, in the sense that Herzog appears to have decided on a location first, and simply filmed whatever he could while he was there. Unlike Encounters, though, it doesn't really feel like a Herzog film for the most part.

I worry that Herzog sees Cage as an approximation of or successor to Kinski, because if he does, he's badly misjudged. Whatever Cage's virtues (and I'm not sure what they are), one thing he's not able to project is a sense of malice. Cage is the guy you go to when you want to turn malice into camp; he doesn't provoke discomfort in an audience, he provokes giggles. There's a scene in the film in which his character

Spoiler

threatens to kill an old woman by pulling her oxygen tube,

and I'm fairly certain that it's intended to be a horrifying scene, but the more Cage tries to be "intense" - and bless his heart, he tries so hard! - the sillier he looks.

Interestingly, Michael Shannon has a small role in the film, and of course he's made My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done with Herzog. I think he would have been a much more effective lead in this film, and I think he's much more similar to Kinski than Cage could ever hope to be.

The material here was never going to be the basis for a heavy spiritual exploration like the Ferrara, but it could have been a fun mix of horror and comedy. Herzog's obviously having some fun with cop-movie tropes, and there's a long list of amusing secondary characters, but but it never feels like more than a jape.

[knives]

Cage is the guy you go to when you want to turn malice into camp; he doesn't provoke discomfort in an audience, he provokes giggles. There's a scene in the film in which his character

Spoiler

threatens to kill an old woman by pulling her oxygen tube,

and I'm fairly certain that it's intended to be a horrifying scene, but the more Cage tries to be "intense" - and bless his heart, he tries so hard! - the sillier he looks.

Considering Herzog has taken pride that more people laughed at this then, "an Eddie Murphy movie," the camp is without a doubt intentional.
Also despite all of the talk of the original Bad LT. the film I'm most immediately reminded of is the original Insomnia,

Spoiler

they even have similar endings even if shown differently.

[Andrew_VB]

just a note, was at a talk with herzog this past fall and he said his film has nothing to do with the 1992 one, he said he's never even seen it.

[flyonthewall2983]

I'd watch this film again in a heartbeat, not something I would say about the "original".

[Lamourderer]

I first watched this film when it was shown in my home town and I was afterwards actually quite surprised that people didn't realize or didn't take notice (based on some of the reviews I had read) that this is a black comedy. Actually, me and a friend who went to the movies with me that time were the only ones laughing in theatre - I think we may have actually made some poor people upset when they were trying to take all the events unfolding on the screen seriously while we were howling like a pair of hyenas. I'm not saying that there isn't a some sort of a serious message in this film but it certainly is one of the funniest films directed by Herzog, rivalling perhaps Even the Dwarfs Started Small.

Some critics and moviegoers have complained about Nicolas Cage being campy in this film. Herzog is not unaware of what kind of actors should he cast in his films, even though he claims sometimes in interviews that he is not that interested in cinéma or doesn't watch that many movies. I have a gut feeling he was impressed by Cage's role in John Woo's Face/Off where Cage is almost as mad (and funny) as in this before he changes faces with Travolta. A sleazy villain but fun to look at. In this film Good Ol' Nic lumps around like Quasimodo with a gigantic gun tucked into his pants mumbling incoherently and threatening old ladies while having hallucinations about lizards. During the film I had a feeling I was watching a weird (and to my surprise, actually good) stoner comedy.

And, I must say... I liked this more than Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant. Probably because the other film's catholic themes are pretty distant for me and I think understanding them are essential for appreciating that film fully, though I think I'm alone with my opinion.

[Grand Illusion]

Finally caught up with this one and was surprised to find out it's a black comedy.

A lot of the set-ups are classic comedy styling. There's the mishmash of wacky characters when Cage is driving around with his key witness, prostitute girlfriend, and father's dog in the car. The film undercuts a genre trope when Cage rips out the oxygen tube of an old woman during an "interrogation." There's the endless fish-out-of-water gags as Cage's unscrupulous cohorts just stroll into the police office to do their business with Cage's character. Even the stoned iguana scene wouldn't be too far out of place in a Harold and Kumar film.

With Herzog's direction and Cage's boisterous performance leading the way, I loved it and laughed throughout. One fun observation is how Cage's gait identically mirrors the Man in Murnau's Sunrise, and, of course, Herzog also remade Murnau's Nosferatu. The only real flaw is Eva Mendes, who has no chemistry with Cage and who I have yet to see contribute anything worthwhile to a character.

[Zot!]

I recently rewatched Bad Lieutenant and Port of Call....and enjoyed both. The Ferrara film is actually great serious film, while the Herzog is a minor film that I found highly entertaining, but fun companion piece.

I'm sorry if this has been already mention but I originally thought this was a joke: Takashi Miike To Direct Neon’s ‘Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo’ https://deadline.com/2025/04/takashi-mi ... 236381941/
I couldn't think of a more appropriate person to helm yet another remake in what has got to be the weirdest accidental franchise going. I respect that Ferrara is probably fuming, but what a bizarre run for what was originally a personal meditation on faith and addiction. But to be fair Ferrara was third in line with the pod people, so really he should understand the delicious irony of the thing.