Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Director: Werner Herzog

2009 / 122min / DCP

Giving a performance as unexpected and feral and occasionally touching as that of Harvey Keitel in Herzog and producer Ed Pressman’s pulp-surrealist sequel-in-name-alone to Abel Ferrara’s 1992 film, Cage plays painkiller-numbed, off-the-rails Big Easy cop Terence McDonagh, trawling the waterlogged, depopulated post-Katrina city in search of the perp in a multiple homicide case, in a film whose many unforgettable detours include an iguana’s-eye-view interlude, Cage soliloquy-ing to Eva Mendes over an old Sterling silver spoon, and partner Val Kilmer bemoaning the ruination of his $55 Swiss cotton underwear. “Herzog has always been as concerned with location as with character; Bad Lieutenant is as much about the sorry state of New Orleans as it is about that of the protagonist’s mental health.” —J. Hoberman, The Village Voice