Badder Lieutenant
Every
time a cop takes consensual sex as a bribe to ignore a drug infraction but uses
a gun to force a bystander to watch a lawyer gets its wings.
It’s a Cage-Mas
miracle!
And so we
witness The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, the latest reboot
in the Nicholas Cage franchise. This new
guy they’ve got playing Cage’s hair will likely please audiences with his more
natural and nuanced performance, and I’ll admit that I liked him too. He’s got a bit of what made the Face/Off
era plugs so appealing but brings his own spin to the role. I still maintain that the Next era
hair was the Pierce Brosnan of Cage hairs, underappreciated in its time but
likely to gain admiration as people reflect on the canon. I’m pretty sure the next stop is to get Doug
Jones in a mocap suit to provide the movements for Cage’s hair and Robert
Zemekis’s team will use this data to animate it.
This reboot has
a lot of the things we look for in the Cage series. Eccentric lead character who is a burnout in
a public service job. Addiction and
other self-destructive behaviour.
Shouting. But Cage definitely
crafts a new character here. The
character has back problems that result in an interesting type of movement and
posture and a new bunch of pained faces from Cage. Actually some of the faces Cage makes while
just listening to people make me try to reflect on any time when I’ve been more
entertained watching a guy listening than the guy talking.
The onscreen captions
in The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans tell us that it is set
in a Southern town named Six Months Later, and normally I’d be kinda pissed
that the Con Air accent wasn’t busted out, but this new voice Cage does
sounds like he’s channelling Richard Nixon and I really got into it especially
as he starts integrating hip-hop expressions into his speech.
And like Tricky
Dick, Cage’s character in this is one that most people would be willing to
judge as a bad guy because of some superficial moral lapses and overlook the
greater good he does. Obviously Cage
doesn’t do anything as big as opening trade with China and getting Doctor
Manhattan to win the Vietnam war, but he solves several crimes, saves a man’s
life and protects his lady from some abusive creeps.
But since this
is a reboot of the Cage franchise they ease us into The Cage. Sometimes a little too slowly for my
tastes. The first half of the movie is
like a very typical police procedural with low volume Cage featuring occasional
volume spikes but for the most part just gradually cranking up The Cage for the
second half when things get a little more unpredictable and take on a bit of a King
of New York vibe when Cage gets high up in an all black crime
syndicate. It becomes pretty obvious that
the guy writing this knew the movie was going to be about the main Cageacter
and I wish he’d made the first half a little more attention grabbing
shenanigans like Harsh Times and not spent so much time on looking at
evidence. Sure, there’s some good moments
and faces in the first half, but nothing like the lucky crack pipe scene or a
key interrogation scene where he goes on some right wing rant long after
getting the information he wanted from the subject. But it’s not most cop movies where you can say
“the thing really came alive when the camera started facefucking an iguana
accompanied by goofy Cajun music”.
I know I am
only talking about Cage up to this point, and those of you who know me know I
think he is the most fascinating actor currently working. But there’s a good supporting cast at work
here too. Val Kilmer plays Michael
Madsen. Xzibit plays 50 Cent. Brad Dourif plays Dennis Hopper. And Eva Mendes plays Training Day era
Eva Mendes and not Ghost Rider Eva Mendes. And they’re all pretty good in their
roles. But obviously the real standout
here is Cage. I really hope he gets A
SECOND OSCAR for this.
As most of you
know, this film is like Lords of Dogtown where they take a documentary
and remake it as a dramatized movie. The
original Bad Lieutenant was a documentary following a bender in the life
of troubled actor Harvey Kietel. Herzog
takes some of the key ideas such as the parts where Kietel believes himself to
be a police officer and uses them as inspiration for this more plotted
character piece.
I’ll also say
that after thoroughly enjoying Cage’s LaBrute-helmed remake of The Wicker
Man I thought maybe he was just putting on an act for the parole board, but
having seen this Herzog-helmed The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,
I feel Cage is definitely totally rehabilitated and poses no threat to
remakes. I feel certain that if he could
go back in time and do things differently he would get Lars Von Trier to helm
his Gone In 60 Seconds remake and I would be prepared to testify to such
in court as a character witness.
Even though
this film has some draggy parts early on, by the time it got to the end I left
feeling all warm inside from having seen this and feel it is the big next step
The Path of The Cage, a path begun with the step of Deadfall so many
year ago. But what does the future hold
for the Elvis-obsessed dinosaur skull-owning Oscar-winning father of
Superman? I think his next remake should
probably be a Mel Gibson-directed The
Quest For Fire: How’d It Get Burned?.
But they should do it in a way that he still gets to play an eccentric
burned out cop, just one who is also a monkey in prehistoric times.
So until one of
the next 6 films he has coming out over the next two years, take care of
yourselves, and each other. Happy Cage-mas!
If you enjoyed this, explore these other
writings of mine:
There’s only one way
out….of The Cage!
Flipping the bird at
crime.
A little bit of white
man’s burden cinema for you.