Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Hey guys I just watched this awesome movie called Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and smoked crack it's a really good movie it has Nicholas Cage and he's a bad lieutenant and he smokes crack and does other drugs because he has a bad back I don't have a bad back but still

I was going to try and write an entire post in "crack talking" but honestly, no one wants that. Anyway, I really dig this movie and I think it's probably destined to be some kind of "cult classic" much more so than the original which is much less "fun," in the conventional sense. Cage's character, despite being a pretty unambiguous scumbag for most of the movie, is intensely likable. Much like the characters that Klaus Kinski plays in Werner Herzog's other movies with him, Cage is a force of nature who you can't help but like even when he's doing despicable things. He even looks like Kinski in a few particularly wild-eyed moments. As much as I like the movie I can't help but imagine what a 70s cop movie directed by Herzog and starring Kinski would have been like. Answer: amazing.

A lot of the reviews for this movie are saying that Cage is the only reason to watch, or that he elevates the material, and shit like that. I find this condescending and misguided. First of all, there are other entertaining performances in the movie from Michael Shannon, Val Kilmer, and whoever that "whoa yeah" guy is (I'm not doing research for a blog that doesn't even have ads anymore - more on that later). Herzog is in top form as well, with lots of nifty long takes (which I am a sucker for) and other memorable visuals, like the (in?)famous "iguana cam." It IS true that the plot (and the way this plot is delivered to the audience) has a bit of a perfunctory, almost TV-procedural quality to it. But part of me actually likes this conceit, because it throws the unhinged nature of Cage's character into sharper relief, and also plays with audience expectations as far as the whole "loose cannon cop who gets results" trope is concerned. More playing with audience expectations can be found in the ending as well, but I don't want to get too spoilery on here.

A couple of things:

• I really, really like the score in this. Almost Hermann-esque at times, I really liked it. Also Herzog reuses the music from the famous dancing chicken scene in Strozsek for a shoot-out, which fit perfectly I might add.
• I don't know how many of my readers are fans of the TV show Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, but Val Kilmer's delivery (and repetition) of the line "there ain't no iguana" is EXACTLY like Moltar's saying "there ain't no village" on an episode of Space Ghost. It's got to be a coincidence, but if the chronology were reversed and Space Ghost came AFTER Port of Call New Orleans, I'd be certain it was an intentional reference.
• The reason there aren't any ads on the site anymore is because apparently it's against Google Adsense policy to display ads on sites with "mature content." This, I think it goes without saying, is fucking bullshit. I thought this was the fucking internet, not goddamn American Idol. Fuck you Google Adsense -- we had made almost 3 dollars from ad clicks on this site. Three fucking dollars.