Nicolas Cage is the Bad Lieutenant
By: MJ Slykas |
Monday November 16, 2009 |
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Port of Call New Orleans |
| With a crooked cop, disaster-torn New Orleans, and more piles of cocaine than Tony Montana’s birthday party, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans has the perfect mix of delightfully sinful ingredients that will make even the most hardened cynic blush. The upcoming movie is somewhat of a remake of Abel Ferrara’s 1992 cult classic, Bad Lieutenant, which featured Harvey Keitel (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction) as a drug-addicted New York City cop reevaluating his life. However, now, the scene is set over one-thousand miles away in the ruins of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina and features a completely new plot line. In Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Nicolas Cage (Lord of War, National Treasure) takes another giant leap away from his humble beginnings in 1983 as a hopeless punk in Valley Girl as he steps into Keitel’s shoes as a good cop gone bad. After being injured in Katrina, Cage becomes overwhelmed with constant back pain and turns to any drug he can get his hands on. Despite his addictions, the rough around the edges cop stays devoted to his job, though the line between right and wrong becomes blurred beyond recognition in his hallucinogenic haze. Together with his prostitute girlfriend, Eva Mendes (Training Day, We Own The Night), Cage traverses the violent city getting whatever he wants by flashing his badge and gun while taking a novel idea of stopping crime by becoming a criminal himself. The film impressively depicts the essence of the morbid character, easily summed up by the German's phrase "schadenfreude" which is used to describe finding enjoyment by watching the downfall of others. Who better to bring the term from print to screen than German film-noir director Werner Herzog (Rescue Dawn, Grizzly Man). He notes that the dark and commentary on human existence is based on his attempt to buy a car, but learning that he had a ridiculously poor credit score despite never owing money and always paying his bills. “The system punished you for not owing money, and rewarded those who did,” he remarked. “I realized that the entire system was sick, that this could not go well.”  His interpretation of humanity is portrayed perfectly in the New Orleans climate as Herzog also notes that “it was not only the levees that breached, but it was civility itself: there was a highly visible breakdown of good citizenship and order.” The breakdown is exemplified by the film’s co-stars including the ever-versatile Val Kilmer (The Saint, Top Secret!), Xzibit (Gridiron Gang), Jennifer Coolidge (American Pie), and Brad Dourif (Child’s Play) who all seem to struggle with morality while attempting to deal with Cage’s character. Despite the differences between Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and the original Bad Lieutenant, a few major similarities can be seen. Most notably, the producer Edward R. Pressman worked on both films, but noted that the writer, “Bill Finkelstein’s, approach gave us a gritty and engaging central character, one that would do justice to the original film and appeal to a wide audience.” However, the wide audience won’t reach as far as the former director, as Ferrara was less than pleased with the plans to reconstruct the film. In an interview with Guardian, Ferrara noted that the production staff of the new film “should all die in hell.” But come hell or high water, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans promises to show audiences the darker side of humanity, not to mention a plot twist that is guaranteed to keep audiences at the edge of their seats. With the unusual combination of Cage and Herzog, the film has potential for redefining the world of film noir. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans opens in theaters nationwide on November 20. |
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