Bad Lieutenant! – So bad that its good.
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Growing up in Bangalore, my friend and I got a bootleg {from “our connections”} copy of Edward D. Wood’s ‘Plan 9 from outer Space’. Back then, Ed wood was tainted as the worst ever director in the history of Hollywood cinema. But, after watching Plan 9, I was so absurdly hooked to his unrelenting compromises, his conviction to still tell the story, negating the very notion of production values to tell a story.
Watching Werner Herzog’s ‘Bad Lieutenant’ took me back to re-living the spirits of Ed Wood’s sloppy yet entertaining Plan 9..
Bad Lieutenant is a delightful entertainer and a crash course on mocking the stereotyped plots and character set ups. I am convinced that Herzog was knowingly proving a point that cinema is entertainment even if it meant compromises with acting and hackneyed soap opera style grimaces.
Bad Lieutenant, as the name suggests, is the story of a corrupt cop, Terrence McDonagh (played by Nicholas Cage) who goes about his ways of extortion (using his office of power) to feed two of his predominant wants – getting high on substances and protecting his prostitute girl friend played by a sublimely sexy Eva Mendes. Getting high on substances is attributed to his chronic back pains. Good job with that set up. Protecting his girl friend, letting her go about her profession and providing her quota of stash on a periodic basis – now that’s just pointless. But, it being pointless was the cheap thrill I was getting, watching this movie.
So, Terrence is put on a case involving a murder of a drug pusher. He traces the perpetrator to a drug lord. Terrence being Terrence strikes a deal with him to offer him protection in exchange for easy access to the stash and a share of the proceeds. Meanwhile, he busts a football player and lets him go in exchange for losing a game, so he could win a bet he made with a bookie. Does any of this sound fresh to you? Again the point was not the freshness.
What was the point then? Herzog’s psychedelic framing, moments that are epic in its stoner movies appeal and lastly making Nicholas Cage and Eva Mendes do what they do best – poorly act and act sexy correspondingly.
So without giving away too much, here are two moments that I got a kick out off – Nicholas’ character is so high all the time that he often sees reptiles around him and get this, the reptiles seem him back! OTS, make that Over The ‘Scales’ shot division. In one other scene involving a shoot out, Terrence insists that his accomplice shoot a dead man again – “Shoot him again. His soul is still dancing”. This set to a visual of the dead man (in Terrence’s subconscious mind) actually break dancing, doing the head spin move.
Ed Wood’s ‘Plan 9 from outer space’ and Herzog’s ‘Bad Lieutenant’ deserve my secret smart and equally absurd comment “The movie is so bad, that it’s seriously good”
Tags: Bad Lieutenant, ed wood, Eva Mendes, giri, giri coneti, girimohan coneti, Herzog, Nicholas Cage
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
A good short review…
Earlier I didn’t want to see this movie, but now I think I will..
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Are you nuts or what? So bad that its good applies to films like 2012. When its Nicholas Cage and Werner Herzog together, you never get bad. You get explosive stuff. I have read the Roger Ebert review, who has given it 4 out of 4 and its not a guilty pleasure. Its a competently acted and solidly told story.
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Its a subjective opinion. I personally don’t think Nicholas Cage has more than two expressions that goes to print – the raised eyebrow and that that thing he does with his mouth.
Herzog is supremely talented and I think he was being deliberate in offering kitsch in this one..
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Nicholas cage has given some great films and performances in the past like Face off, Con Air, Gone in 60 seconds, Leaving las vegas, 8 mm amongst others. It’s only of late esp. after national treasure tht he’s started doing a lot of crappy stuff like next, bangkok dangerous, ghost rider etc. In my opinion he’s atalented chap who’s been doing crap for quite some time now.
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Bangkok Dangerous was actually an awesome b-movie style flick.
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u guys should see Bad Lieutenant – the 1992 movie …. brilliant, shocking and harrowing…. harvey keitel is superb in the movie
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Not sure if you watched the same movie – I thought it was one of the top 10 films showed at LFF this year. Nic Cage was brilliant, and Herzog was awesome in capturing the trippy scenes. Havent seen anything like that since Trainspotting.
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Herzog claims that his story is not influenced by the original as much as it does have the premise of a bad cop..I do see the novelty in moving to a post katrina new orleans (may be the only novelty:)
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Girimohan,
Did two-expressions-only Cage get a Best Actor Oscar because he is Francis Ford Cappola’s bhatija? :-)
Go see Leaving Las Vegas. MatchStick Men.Lord of War. Raising Arizona.Cage is a better than average Actor-definitely.
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