His scene in a bear suit in the horrible remake of The Wicker Man notwithstanding, it's been a long time since we've really seen Nicolas Cage let his freak flag fly.
I'm talking the cockroach-eating Nic Cage of Vampire's Kiss, the one who used to do interesting things before he became a human theme-park ride in movies such as National Treasure and Ghost Rider.
Nic, meet Werner Herzog. I think you two might be sympatico, judging from the gleefully uninhibited freak show that is Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans.
Herzog's acting advice to Cage to "release the pig" (ostensibly a Bavarian saying) has resulted in perhaps the most memorable performance of Cage's career, and certainly the most over the top.
Enraged fans of Abel Ferrara's 1992 Bad Lieutenant, with Harvey Keitel, should retract their claws, if only for the fact that Herzog himself was angry with having the trademark stuck on his film by the producers. Port of Call New Orleans bears no resemblance to that earlier film, other than the fact that it's about a truly bad police lieutenant. In fact, it trades that movie's angst and seriousness for a sense of revelry in human degradation.
It is, if I dare say so, fun. Weird, twisted fun of the sort only Herzog could provide, the kind of fun that features an hallucination of an iguana singing Please Release Me as a sweaty Nic Cage looks on in wonder.
The movie opens in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Terence McDonagh (Cage) is an officer in a rapidly flooding precinct where the other cops are tacitly allowing prisoners to drown as the holding area fills. In his sole heroic moment in the movie, Cage decides to dive in and save one of the holdees.
Flash ahead several months later. Having severely injured his back in the incident, McDonagh has been promoted and also carries on his back a huge addiction to Vicodin, and any other pain-ameliorating substance he can scam, all the way up to crack.
With or without the help of his also-using prostitute girlfriend (Eva Mendes, channeling her character from We Own The Night), McDonagh scores enough for 10 junkies, shaking down club kids, short-changing the evidence room drug bags, etc.
Fueled as he is, he seems capable of anything -- even shaking down an old lady in an oxygen tank, and screaming an insane soliloquy at her about how her very life is robbing her kids of their inheritance.
Of course, under the influence, he must also do his job. Here, that involves trailing the murder of an illegal alien from Senegal. Said trail leads him to a gangster named Big Fate (played by the rapper Xzibit), a badass who is nonetheless taken aback when the officer investigating him turns out to own his own lucky crack pipe.
There is nothing predictable about the way any of this turns out. McDonagh shows out-of-the-blue flashes of humanity when he scrapes rock bottom, and takes left turns just when you think the movie seems headed for a light at the end of the tunnel.
Of course, this kind of crazy is not for all tastes. Your mileage may vary, but you should be able to tell going in whether Nicolas Cage in full released-pig mode is your cup of ham.
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BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS
2 Hours, 1 Minute
Starring
Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendez, Xzibit
Director
Werner Herzog
Sun Rating: 4 out of 5
