Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

If I could rate a 0 on this movie, I would have. This was the biggest waste of 2 hours. I cannot believe that a single person enjoyed this poor excuse for a film. I have watched some really stupid movies in the past, but absolutely nothing compares to the crappy acting, extremely poor directing and lack luster plot that this movie had. The entire movie was like a baby crying that you couldn't get to shut up...so many times I had to will myself to keep watching, in hopes of it being saved in the end (Spoiler alert, it is bad through out it's entirety). Nicolas Cage has definitely dropped about 10 pegs and I have lost all respect for his acting abilities. To be perfectly honest I probably wont watch any of his movies in the future. If I had any part of this film, I would quit my career and become a recluse. All and all, don't watch this movie!!!

What bothered me most about this movie was that after the movie I felt no care that I had watched it. It didn't entertain me during the movie and afterwards I picked out the parts of the film that made my experience even worse. The fact that detective Terence McDonagh got a bad back by jumping into the water. How then could he save the drowning inmate? These two pieces of the plot are the keystones to the rest of the film and it just could not happen. Whether the movie was meant to be a combination of imaginations of the detective I do not know but unlike a "A Beautiful Mind" the renderings of the fictions in an altered reality come across as work of a six year old holding a camera. Not a crafted piece of deception which the mind is readily able to do. Just irritating to watch. I personally do not think that the people who created this movie really cared about making this movie. Every plot twist was created not out of intrigue or imagination but out of convenience. The biggest nail in the coffin of why I think this movie was not created out of care was the editing. Five, Six, Seven or more times I saw the overhead microphone come into the shot including the shadow of the mike on one occasion. If I was to view the DVD in the future would I see crew as well- it would not surprise me in the least. The police cruiser of detective Terence McDonagh driving to confront the young couples leaving the night club obviously has no right side mirror- the stump of where it is attached is clearly there but no mirror. Very disappointing to say the least. Others have mentioned overacting and to me the simplistic characters show a lack of care in creating a film which on its surface was meant to be something of substance. It certainly was not that at all. What an awful film.

...so you can laugh at all the things you said "WTF???" about the first time. Singing iguanas? Break dancing dead Gangsters? 'Gator Cam? Was Cage actually TRYING to make a comedy? Honestly, I understand the guy's house(s) are all in foreclosure, but jeeze...this was worse than "The Wickerman" and I found myself hoping someone would pour bees on his head and burn him up in effigy in THIS one, too. Oh, and who could forget the wonderful line: "Oh oh oh! You are So gonna be sorry you did this...Oh oh oh oh oh!!!" Someone actually got paid for writing that line? You've got to be joking. Quite a bit of fantasy all around--any of the girls that had to actually had to kiss him...they all deserve Academy Award nods. Poor Eva Mendez...she's much too good for this movie.

Man...what a crappy movie. I found myself looking away from the screen sometimes out of embarrassment for Nicolas Cage. Everything was bad. The only reason I didn't walk out of the theater is because I am from New Orleans and wanted to see how Herzog filmed the city. In fact I thought his choice of locations was excellent. The African funeral scene was filmed in Holt Cemetery, which is a potter's field in an otherwise middle-class neighborhood. If you go there you will find human bones sticking out of the ground everywhere! No one has a New Orleans accent except the old black lady. I don't have one either but I am from the suburbs. The fancy apartment building where the old lady lives is the St. Vincent de Paul Guest House on Magazine Street. Stay there! It is atmospheric and inexpensive. I also used to live one block from where they busted "Midget". The person whose room I rented left the house after being bashed in the head with a brick while unlocking her door. Other than Holt Cemetery and some nice shots of some of the most picturesque slums in America, there is little to recommend. Fairuza Balk looks really good in her underwear scene...Nicolas Cage mentions it too. He is a terrible actor. He is totally unconvincing. The whole movie is boring and pointless. Is it a comedy or a drama? It is neither, it is nothing. It could maybe have been a success if Cage and Herzog had played it differently. Instead of making the Bad Lieutenant tortured, they should have made him a sort of jolly, amoral sadist who just enjoys the hell out of himself. Cage tried to put on his pathos-face though and screwed it up. Some random remarks: The plantation house looks cool. - Xzibit looks exactly like 50 Cent. - There are no Senegalese immigrants in New Orleans - The iguana stuff is stupid. - The whole movie is stupid.

Many will look at this and will think that it is an action thriller about a cop trying to solve the murders of 5 people in New Orleans and that is a basic idea of what the film is about. 'Trying' is right word to use; Nicolas Cage's characters is deeply flawed and is taking drugs to ease his back pain, which he got for saving a prisoner in a flooded prison. He has no interest in bringing the people responsible to justice. It is difficult to describe what happens in the film because it is so different from other films that I have seen. If you have seen Werner Herzog's other films then you will like this maybe not as much as some of his other films but there is a lot to like. Nicolas Cage gives a fantastic performance and is clearly back on form after the likes of Next, National Treasure and The Wicker Man. The rest of the cast also do a good job but the focus is on Cage. The chosen location of New Orleans suits the film well and the cinematographer does a good job showing it. The script writer must also be credited for providing the film with interesting pieces of dialogue even though its difficult to tell what was improvised and what was not. This film is not for everyone though since the trailer shows it as a more of an crime thriller than a drama. If you are not a fan of art house films or films that have an offbeat sense of humor then you might not enjoy it as much as those who do. Those who watch this film and liked it will be able to find plenty of things about the film that represent something else. There is clearly more to this film than what is happening on the surface. If you do choose to watch this film then go in with an open mind as there is a lot to like but I can't guarantee that it will be for everyone.

This movie was a craptastic " B " movie that should not have been made for public consumption.. There was just so much wrong with this movie its not worth speaking on all of them. Here again you got people that want to tell you how to view this movie for "what it is ".. If you cant see this movie for what it is your loony.. A bad movie by any other name is still a bad movie.. Please people stop saying the director was trying to do this and was trying to do that.. He was trying to make a good film and failed.. Bottom line.. When you get a movie with a gator cam and a breaking dancing dead guy something is not right here.. My biggest concern.. Is the Lack of accents in a movie that was filmed in N.O. if anyone knows anything about this city you know,, its heavy in accent.. there is not one person with one in this movie.. They all seem to be from New York,, it really upset me to think that we as a people are so dumb not to notice the basic speech of the people from this region,,, nonsense.. It sets you up to see a bad movie and it delivered...

This nominal remake to Abel Ferrara’s 1992 original isn’t bad, and it’s not really good, either. Nicolas Cage stars as the titular cop who doesn’t so much as bend the law as stomp it flat in his quest to do whatever. Cage isn’t terrible, but even his unhinged charisma isn’t quite edgy enough and feels one dimensional. Even the nihilism of Harvey Keitel’s character in the earlier film had more of a point than this uneven drama. Terence McDonagh is a detective in New Orleans. We pick up his story shortly after the landfall of Hurricane Katrina; in an early scene, he and his partner (Val Kilmer) joke about saving or not saving a prisoner in a cell in which the water level has risen past the man’s head. As the criminal desperately treads water, McDonagh takes odds on his survival before the firemen come to rescue him. As before, our protagonist is investigating a crime. A family of five has been shot, execution style, in their home. McDonagh must, of course, pull out all the stops to solve the crime and thus get more power and money and keep his prostitute girlfriend (Eva Mendes) in nice clothes and a high-class hotel. He also has a serious drug habit, shaking down clubgoers in exchange for not busting them for whatever it is they didn’t do. McDonagh also has to deal with his father, a recovering alkie, and his father’s girlfriend (Jennifer Coolidge) a current alkie, who live out in the middle of the bayou. But where Ferrara’s movie pushed the envelope and strained our sense of good taste, Werner Herzog’s alleged remake seems too straightforward. McDonagh is just another dirty cop who breaks the rules to get what he wants. In the 17 years between films, we’ve all seen countless movies about dirty cops, and Cage’s McDonagh seems no better or worse than any of them. Keitel’s unnamed lieutenant desecrated churches and pranced about in a naked, drunken stupor, but Cage’s cop can’t summon up the cojones to do anything that wild and crazy. Or maybe it’s just that we’re all so numb to outlandish on screen behavior that there’s not much that Cage and Herzog could have done to shock and awe us. It’s worth noting that Ferrara, when asked about Herzog’s upcoming film, didn’t have much nice to say about it; Herzog also stated in interviews that he didn’t feel that his movie was a remake of Ferrara’s, despite the title, because he (Herzog) had not seen the original. (Well, you can’t fault that logic, right?) I just didn’t find anything horrible about this movie, nothing that makes me really dislike it. But I also didn’t find it wildly entertaining. It has its adrenaline moments, and the cast tries, but it’s just an ineffective film. It’s fun to see Val Kilmer, though, and Mendes looks great. The trouble with this movie is that the connection to the original is tenuous at best; it sort of feels like the Bad Lieutenant part was tacked on in an effort to sell more tickets. Nah, that’s unpossible. Hollywood would never use familiarity to make more money, right? Cage is going to have to do far more of these to pay off his tax bill.

BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL – NEW ORLEANS, started off as a type of cop thriller – based in New Orleans following the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina Nicholas Cage (Raising Arizona, Face Off, Con Air) plays dirty cop Terence McDonagh investigating the murder of an immigrant family who were involved with drugs, his life takes a turn for the worse when injuring his back whilst saving the life of a prisoner – his injuries giving him so much pain that he turns to stealing drugs from criminals to feed his constantly growing habit This film lost it's way early on in the story and never recovered in that every time that the tension built up to a climax the director would go off on some zany weird tangent that had nothing to do with the story – trying, but failing to emulate the style of the Coen brothers. Ultimately this was a very poorly directed movie that didn't know where it was going or what it was trying to achieve, and a surprising bad film from quite a revered Director Werner Herzog Although it should be said that there was such a strong cast and noteworthy performances by Eva Mendes (Frankie Donnenfield) as the love interest, Brad Dourif (Ned Schoenholtz) as a bookie, Jennifer Coolidge (Genevieve) as the Mother and Val Vilmer (Stevie Pruit) as the violent cop – there was really nothing that could save this film. With the twists and turns in the plot – this film could have gone in any of ten directions – and I'm pretty sure that any of the other nine directions would have made a better movie. The title of the movie suggests that this is one of a series of BAD LIEUTENANT films - Note to self: Don't bother watching any more of this series

It was absurdist, because it didn't make sense. It was over the top, and then some. That doesn't automatically make it a comedy. For that it would need, what's that word again... oh yeah, humor! Which it didn't have. Because it wasn't funny. To me. I went into the movie not knowing the genre, or who made it. I cringed at every cliché, and though it sometimes had the air of a spoof comedy, it was just so... off. The film's rhythm hurt my brain. And it felt like it lasted for ages. So if that was the effect Herzog went for, he succeeded. A very accurate rendition of a crappy movie, bravo! The joke's on us, I guess. We must have deserved it somehow, you know we'll watch anything by you. And you must be a real artist if you can invoke such genuine emotions in your audience, like disgust and disappointment. I gave it a 4 for getting such a great cast together, but I'd like at least 1 of those 2 hours back.

Viewers of the film who think it and/or Cage's acting are simply 'bad' or 'cheesy' are missing the point of what Herzog is doing. Then again, viewers who think it's a wild and crazy artistic take on the crime/noir genre (i.e. the 'it's different/wacky/quirky, therefore it's good' crowd) are also probably missing the point - especially if they think the lizards and dancing soul are 'symbolic' or 'represent' things. (Warning - spoilers ahead...) What Herzog seems to be doing is serving up a parody of mainstream cinematic conventions, especially those which verge towards melodrama in their earnest attempts to be 'meaningful', 'emotional', etc. From the opening scene establishing the character as a 'wounded hero' and giving a motivation for his drug addiction with which we can sympathize (Keitel's character in the original had none, as far as I can remember), to the ending where his problems all get resolved in a single scene (!), followed by a flash forward to when his girlfriend is pregnant and his family is back on track, the film serves up one melodramatic movie cliché after another (and skewers them, not through the familiar Mel Brooks/'Scary Movie'-style of parody-through-references, but purely through the ridiculousness of it all and the over-the-top performance from Cage). The scenes that aren't clichés (i.e. the soul dancing, the alligator/iguanas, the last shot of the fish tank) work as disruptions from the plot which highlight how ridiculous it is, like the way Bunuel would use a narrative digression to 'take the mickey' out of a melodramatic plot. Nonsensical lines like "Do fish have dreams?" or "I'll kill the three of you (dramatic pause) till the break of dawn", delivered by Cage as if they were poetic, clever or menacing, make fun of both the typical cool 'one-liners' found in action and crime movies and the pseudo-poetic, supposedly 'deep and meaningful' lines found in many 'indie' movies. Perhaps the most convincing signs that the film isn't meant to be serious, but is ridiculous on purpose, are the over-the-top acting of the abusive john that Cage kicks out of his girlfriend's hotel room (repeating 'whoa' and pausing to say something like 'oh yeah' to the kid waiting in the hall outside!), which proves it's not just Cage who was told to overact, and the last shot - held for quite a long time on two characters sitting under a fish tank (coming after the aforementioned "Do fish have dreams?" line which makes it seem like it has some sort of 'deep' or symbolic meaning), with Cage cracking up just when we're growing impatient for something to happen, followed by a sudden cut to black. Even the casting of Val Kilmer in the role of an unimportant character who had next to nothing to do and could have been played by anyone seems to have parodic intentions (what has Kilmer done recently?). As some reviewers have pointed out, the actual plot, once you remove the stylized direction and acting, is the sort of thing you'd expect to find in a low quality, straight-to-DVD mystery/thriller. Especially when you consider that many of Herzog's earlier films, while definitely being bizarre or 'quirky', weren't cheesy or campy but had definite depth of humanity to them, it really seems like here he's making fun of the generic, conventional material he was given, rather than taking it seriously. In a way, it reminded me of "The Room", but done deliberately with a larger budget, more technical polish and with an established star and director who have proved their abilities in the past - all of which make it more likely for viewers to take what they're seeing seriously, instead of seeing through the absurdity of it all. Or perhaps a better comparison would be "Adaptation" (also starring Cage!) which parodies mainstream film-making conventions in a similar way in its final half hour (and there's even an alligator!)