Bad Lieu­tenant: Port of Call – New Orleans

After some sam­ple dia­logue from Nico­las Cage’s lat­est big screen bust-up? How about: ​“Shoot him again… His soul’s still danc­ing.” Or: ​“I’m the last per­son in the world you want me to be.” Then there’s our per­son­al favourite: ​“You’re the fuck­ing rea­son this coun­try is going down the drain!” That last screamed in the crag­gy face of a decrepit old dear whose air sup­ply he’s just cur­tailed, and whom he’s bul­ly­ing with gun­point brutality.

Is this real­ly the same chap who just last year lent his lar­ynx to throw­away kid­die crap like Astro Boy and G‑Force? All we can assume is that there was some­thing in the water around the time that the scripts for Bad Lieu­tenant and recent com­ic-book caper Kick-Ass slapped down on his doormat.

In Bad Lieu­tenant we dis­cov­er a Cage clear­ly tap­ping a new, elec­tri­fy­ing ener­gy. Gone is the man who gave face in dreck like The Wick­er Man and Ghost Rid­er; this is a tougher, charged, wil­ful­ly defi­ant actor cher­ry-pick­ing risky roles like a mad man danc­ing on gun­pow­der with a match in his hand. And they don’t come much riski­er than Bad Lieu­tenant, a riff on Abel Ferrara’s 1992 crime thriller of the same name. Shrug­ging into the role of Ter­ence McDon­agh, Cage plays a lieu­tenant injured in the line of duty. Six months lat­er we encounter him again, now a hunched, hal­lu­ci­nat­ing mess, snort­ing cocaine at crime scenes and sticky-fin­ger­ing any sub­stance (‘MJ’, crack, hero­in) his wan­der­ing, glazed eyes spy. Yep, he’s vice with vices.

Though steered by renowned bound­ary-flout­ing direc­tor Wern­er Her­zog, this is entire­ly Cage’s show. Co-cop Val Kilmer bare­ly gets a look in, while love inter­est Eva Mendes looks daz­zling but does very lit­tle besides. Only scene-steal­ing sup­port from improv queen Jen­nifer Coolidge refracts the glare of Cage’s glow­ing turn.

Alright, so Cage’s crip­pled Qua­si­mo­do is good. What about the rest of the film? Truth­ful­ly, it’s a mixed bag. Scat­ter­shot in tone (though per­haps that’s the point), it’s dead­ly seri­ous one moment, then hys­ter­i­cal­ly histri­on­ic the next. Her­zog milks the rav­aged, post-Kat­ri­na set­ting for all its worth, soak­ing the streets in a moody blue, neo-noir blush, while inflat­ing William Finkelstein’s by-the-num­bers, cat-and-mouse drug-bust­ing script with the flour­ish­es of his own eccen­tric ego.

The result is a pic­ture pre­car­i­ous­ly poised on the cliff-edge of absur­di­ty (lin­ger­ing close-ups of var­i­ous ani­mals fos­ter near-hys­te­ria; McDonagh’s extreme actions seem to exist in a uni­verse all their own). But it’s Cage’s plucky, peer­less per­for­mance, seam­less­ly paired with Herzog’s ambi­ent land­scapes, that anchor pro­ceed­ings in a queasy, wild­ly enter­tain­ing hyper-real­i­ty. In short? Cage does bad so good. Here’s hop­ing he keeps the crazy coming.