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Generally favorable reviews - based on 32 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 80 Ratings

  • Starring: Eva Mendes, Nicolas Cage
  • Summary: In Werner Herzog’s new film Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans, Nicolas Cage plays a rogue detective who is as devoted to his job as he is at scoring drugs -- while playing fast and loose with the law. He wields his badge as often as he wields his gun in order to get his way. In the afaftermath of Hurricane Katrina he becomes a high-functioning addict who is a deeply intuitive, fearless detective reigning over the beautiful ruins of New Orleans with authority and abandon. Complicating his tumultuous life is the prostitute he loves. Together they descend into their own world marked by desire, compulsion, and conscience. The result is a singular masterpiece of filmmaking: equally sad and manically humorous. (FirstLook Studios) Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 25 out of 32
  2. Negative: 1 out of 32
  1. 100
    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.
  2. Reviewed by: Jessica Baxter
    80
    Nicolas Cage is a joy to watch, and Werner Herzog is a brilliant storyteller.
  3. Cage is not quite Aguirre or Fitzcarraldo in the Big Easy. But his performance hits all the right mythopoetic beats, rising above the thin script and late-night-cable aesthetic.
  4. The film is an exasperating bore.

See all 32 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 21 out of 31
  2. Negative: 8 out of 31
  1. MichaelJ
    10
    Excellent. DO NOT MISS. For yourself, see a movie worth its salt. Maybe the best, certainly the most underrated cinema of 2009. Anyone who doesn't think so, doesn't really like movies, maybe coffee table books are more their thing. Expand
  2. Bad Lieutenant is a movie that you either get and like or dont and hate. I got it. Some may be disapointed by the story and its weirdness. I am interested in its character who nicholas Cage plays marvelously. Not to mention the iguanas. Overall great ride of a film Expand
  3. To say Nicolas Cage is not my favourite actor would be an understatement. That said films like Con Air are a guilty pleasure of mine. Cage stars in Werner Herzog's 2009 film Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. I haven't seen the 1992 film of the same name so I'm coming at this film from an original standpoint.

    Cage is Terrence McDonaugh, a lieutenant in the New Orleans police department with an ailing back, earned saving a prisoner during the Katrina floods, that has lead to a growing drug and gambling addiction. The story revolves around a murder investigation, however, the police work is only ever a long second to McDonaugh's spiral out of control. To say the wheels fall off as the story progresses would suggest they were even on in the first place. Cage is fantastic as the reckless, dishevelled, bug-eyed and hunched over addict on the slope to despair. It is definitely by favourite performance by the guy.

    Beating David Simon's Treme to the punch, post-Katrina New Orleans is an apt setting for the lawlessness and desperate nature of the film's main character.

    Although McDonaugh is certainly a bad lieutenant, snorting coke in front of a teenage witness and pulling the oxygen tube out of an elderly lady's nose while interrogating and verbally abusing her, most of his meltdowns and law-breaking come in pursuit of the drugs he needs and his police work remains largely on point.

    The film is maniacally amusing as McDonuagh loses control and coupled with Herzog's abstract direction and William Finkelstein's script, it almost becomes a black comedy. The stand out scene in Bad Lieutenant involves the camera cutting to two iguanas on a table (the iguanas being a hallucination of McDonaughs) where the camera stays watching McDonaugh (who stares back) and his team on a stakeout from the iguana point of view for over a minute with nothing but music playing. Surreal indeed.

    The supporting cast is strong and includes Eva Mendes, Michael Shannon (Boardwalk Empire), Val Kilmer and X-Zibit but there is only one bad lieutenant.

    An excellent film featuring a great performance from Nicholas Cage.
    Expand
  4. KyriY
    2
    Absolute crack. Terrible music, convoluted story, and an over the top performance by a once good actor. If you want a real flavour of New Orleans watch "Treme" the new series from the creators of the wire. Expand

See all 31 User Reviews

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