Way back in 1992, Abel Ferrara directed Harvey Keitel in the movie Bad Lieutenant. Ferrara was hot off the success of the gritty crime drama King Of New York (I highly recommend it) and Harvey Keitel exploded in Resevoir Dogs. This movie will be great I thought. I was wrong. It is quite simply one of the worst movies ever made. It makes no sense, dull beyond words and mostly consists of Keitel walking around naked, and I do mean NAKED, spouting nonsensical dialouge, if it can be called that. It's really a primodial scream set to music for 45 minutes. I'm not kidding. Watch it. I dare you.
This movie on the other hand is much much better than that. It's not really a remake at all except both had deviant detectives solving a crime. Nicholas Cage is the best he's been in years, although I also admit to being a big fan of his in general. Yes I liked Ghost Rider and National Treasure 1 and 2. Sue me. But in this film he's truly insane, which may not be far off from his somewhat bizzare, real-life personality.
The plot is complex, mostly surrounding the death of five illegal immagrants. But tangents are taken with Cage's hooker/girlfriend played by Eva Mendes, Brad Doriff as a bookie, Val Kilmer as his partner, and Fariza Balk as a partner in crime. Along the way Cage does every drug known to man and a few new ones he invented along the way. Incidently, in all the coke scenes, he's acually snorting baby powder. Yuck.
Well directed by Werner Herzog whose only other film I saw was the disturbing Grizzly Man. In that gem, the camera follows an insane man around in his quest to be eaten by bears. He does succeed. This film has a strange hallucinatory effect that sometimes works and sometimes falls flat or overlong. All the scenes with lizards are pointless and dull. Don't ask why, you'd have to see it to understand. But some of the shoots are very effective. A single spotlight Cage shoots on a darkened street corner, looking for a suspect but only briefly illuminating 20 dollar crack whores, is compelling and somewhat scary. The whores are like zombies in the glare, only catching fleeing glimpses of them as the car moves on.
Not everything works here. The ending is jarring from the rest of the picture and whole scenes don't work or could have been radically shortened. Trust me the lizard scenes go on way too long. Fast forward, you'll miss nothing. But if you'd like to see a very strange, oddly effective thriller, this one is worth your time.
3 and 1/2 stars out of five
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