Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans stars Nicolas Cage in his most recent ridiculous hairpiece playing Terence McDonagh, a homicide detective in The Big Easy with a giant monkey on his back. He has a preference for cocaine which he borrows from the police properties room to keep himself and his hooker girlfriend Frankie (Eva Mendes) living the high life. He comes by his job and his addiction honestly being a second generation cop to an alcoholic father yet a man he can still turn to. Ironically Terence might not be a druggie or a Lieutenant if it were not for an act of valour in the wake of Hurricane Katrina that left him with a new shield but also chronic back pain. Years later the city is still worse for wear and so is our anti hero now trying to solve the execution case of an entire family of illegal immigrants who crossed the wrong drug lord named Big Fate (Xzibit). Almost as frustrating to McDonagh as his mounting debt to his bookie not to mention a mob hit man he’s run afoul of are reluctant witness fearing reprisal, but for a cop who wears a Magnum 44 stuffed under the belt holding up a bad fitting suit, breaking the rules as a means to an end is not something beyond his comfort zone. Nice to see Vancouver’s Fairuza Balk getting a fat role in this picture which director Werner Herzog insists is not a remake of the 1992 Harvey Keitel film Bad Lieutenant even though it’s basically the same premise. He makes this take unique though by juxtaposing the action against a backdrop of a city still trying to recover from devastation - too bad the depth of his actor’s abilities does not come close to matching the depth of the deluge that caused that iconic city’s ruin.