The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans | reviews, news & interviews
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Werner Herzog's tale of a mad rogue cop stays well within its comfort zone
Friday, 21 May 2010
Playing for laughs: Nicolas Cage interrogates a witness in Werner Herzog's 'The Bad Lieutenant'
Werner Herzog is your go-to guy if you want a film about extraordinary madness. The German director's legendary partnership with Klaus Kinski yielded such wild and wonderful monuments to insanity as Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo. Theirs would be the natural team for this tale of a cop run amok, but, Kinski having departed to that great padded cell in the sky, Herzog hooks up instead with Nicolas Cage. The result is a slickly amusing, facetious study in dementia that declares its weirdness loud and proud without straying anywhere close to the edge of its comfort zone.
Werner Herzog is your go-to guy if you want a film about extraordinary madness. The German director's legendary partnership with Klaus Kinski yielded such wild and wonderful monuments to insanity as Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo. Theirs would be the natural team for this tale of a cop run amok, but, Kinski having departed to that great padded cell in the sky, Herzog hooks up instead with Nicolas Cage. The result is a slickly amusing, facetious study in dementia that declares its weirdness loud and proud without straying anywhere close to the edge of its comfort zone.
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
more Film
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga review - just as mad without Max
George Miller’s latest dystopian dust-up in the desert
The Beach Boys, Disney+ review - heroes and villains and good vibrations
Stylish retelling of the Beach Boys saga could use sharper teeth
'I think of her as a proto-punk': documentarist Svetlana Zill on Anita Pallenberg
The co-director considers her revelatory account of the Stones' muse of mayhem
theartsdesk Q&A: Eddie Marsan and the American Revolution, posh boys and East End gangsters
Versatile actor on playing John Adams opposite Michael Douglas in Apple TV+’s ‘Franklin'
DVD/Blu-ray: Billy Connolly - Big Banana Feet
The comic caught on the cusp of his fame as he tours Ireland in 1975
Bermondsey Tales: Fall of the Roman Empire review - dirty deeds done dirt cheap
Michael Head's gangland drama is a bit of a dog's breakfast
Two Tickets to Greece review - the highs and lows of a holiday from hell
Laure Calamy, Olivia Côte and Kristin Scott Thomas star in a silly French comedy
Hoard review - not any old rubbish
A star is born amid the muck and squalor of Luna Carmoon's ambitious directorial debut
Blu-ray: Chocolat
Claire Denis' African debut is a nostalgic yet unsparing look at colonial life
DVD/Blu-ray: The Holdovers
Bittersweet, beautifully observed seasonal comedy - not just for Christmas
Our Mothers review - revisiting the horrors of Guatemala's civil war
Hard-hitting first feature from director Cesar Diaz
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes review - a post-human paradise
A richly suggestive new era for the franchise reconnects with its 1968 start
Add comment