Rating: Violence, coarse language, sexual situations, not suitable for children
Playing at: ByTowne Cinema, through Dec. 10
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Werner Herzog has been involved in a lot of strange projects -- he once threatened to eat his shoe if Errol Morris finished his movie about pet cemeteries, a wager whose upshot is recorded in the documentary Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe -- but turning Nicolas Cage into an iguana stands as one of his greatest cinematic achievements.
That seems to be part of the point, in any event, of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, a hypnotically druggy film noir that looks like what would have happened if Hunter S. Thompson adapted something by Raymond Chandler. Dark and hilarious, this is a police procedural conducted under the influence of much medication. "Whatever I take's prescription," says Terence McDonagh (Cage), a New Orleans police officer who needs painkillers for his bad back. "Except for the heroin."
Terence is one of the great characters in Cage's filmography, a casually corrupt cop whose back injury has him lurching with a hunched-over gait -- he looks like Hunter Thompson impersonating Richard Nixon -- and a look at once pinched and feral.
Combine that with a mad way of bursting out laughing at odd moments (a gangster's nickname, G, inevitably brings on his toothy wince) and he begins to look vaguely reptilian. Herzog, who has demons of his own -- a lot of them cast in his movies, as it turns out -- has thrown in several scenes in which Terence sees iguanas that are not visible to anyone else. (Terence: "What are those f----n' iguanas doing on my coffee table?")
By the end, Terence and the iguanas seem to be much the same beast, mysteriously wide-eyed creatures at the black heart of some Louisiana hallucination. But there's more than snaky visions in Bad Lieutenant, which is only vaguely related to Abel Ferrara's 1992 movie about a corrupt cop infused with a sense of Catholic guilt and a search for redemption.
This corrupt cop (the screenplay is by William Finkelstein) is infused with iguana sightings and a search for crack cocaine.
The drug habit has turned Terence into a shuffling wreck who, furthermore, owes money to gamblers, has recently made enemies of a violent hoodlum, and will shortly be under investigation for intimidating the ailing mother of a U.S. congressman, a scene that tears the edges of propriety as merrily as oxygen tubes being ripped from an old woman's nose. Terence is also something of a pimp to his girlfriend Frankie (Eva Mendes), and has to protect her from violent johns.
Where were we? Ah yes, the plot: In post-Katrina New Orleans, someone has killed a family of African immigrants and Terence is on the case. It leads to a gangster called Big Fate (Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner), but along the way, Terence keeps falling deeper into trouble: He alleviates his drug problem by ripping off the police property room, or by arresting young people and stealing their cocaine, and also forces the young men to watch as he has sex with the young women. This is only one of his many non-standard approaches.
The serpentine narrative of Bad Lieutenant is practically beside the point, however.
The loony world of Louisiana comes alive in scenes like a car accident where skid marks run over the body of an alligator. Terence's journey becomes madder and more dangerous as our hero -- who wears a huge Magnum stuffed into his belt -- becomes more outrageous and violent.
By the end, when he tells a wild-eyed story about a football player who sprouted antlers as he flew over the opposition, Cage has entered a zone beyond acting and into something approaching psychopathy. It's a memorable performance, and certainly the best one Cage has given in years.
Then there's this: Early in the film, at the murder scene, Terence goes into the room of a slain child and finds a paper on his desk. It's a school essay, entitled "My friend," and it reads: "My friend is a fish. He live in my room. His fin is a cloud. He see me when I sleep." The scene is casually included, but the words touch a spot of decency somewhere way inside Terence, and they animate the moral journey of Bad Lieutenant. Moral and insane, all at the same time.
Colour Photo: Nicolas Cage is a corrupt New Orleans cop with a bad back and a drug habit who thinks he sees iguanas in this deliciously dark movie. --
