To simply dismiss this film as a trite cop melodrama would be to miss a great deal about it. Let me be clear: this is not a great movie. It is over-the-top, silly and cartoonish - but that is all done on purpose. It is a Film Noire genre farce, and much better understood as a tongue-in-cheek view of the cop drama than as a pure mystery man-hunt scenario. Director Werner Herzog is one of the smartest people in (or out of) Hollywood and if you watch this film as poking fun at banal shoot-em-up Hollywood fare it will be much more enjoyable.
More than a sequel to Abel Ferrara's 1992 cult classic Bad Lieutenant, this is a re-invention of a similar story - a corollary to the original. Much like Harvey Keitel in the earlier one, here Nicholas Cage plays the eponymous policeman who is addicted to any number of narcotics and pain meds, has a hooker for a girlfriend (played by Eva Mendes), has a bad gambling habit, enjoys forced-sex with out-of-luck civilians, is on the take from any number of underworld bad guys. All the while he gets promoted for what appears to be his totally legal and ethical work. The main drama here has Cage hunting a New Orleans drug lord who killed an immigrant family who stepped into his territory, but as he gets closer to an arrest, he loses track of the case because of his own messy life.
Herzog does a very nice job of holding the narrative together well and telling a pretty good story. It does not drag too much, nor does it fetishize Cage's problems. He re-interprets some of the most salient moments from the first movie, as a nod to what came before, but does not replay them exactly. At one moment, Cage shakes down white clubbers for drugs (for his own use) and then forces the girl to have sex with him, threatening her with jail time if she refuses. Cage's lieutenant is similar to Keitel's in his love of vice, but is ultimately a new character entirely. Herzog also has a few wonderful moments seen from Cage's toxified eyes - drug-addled fantasies that are beautiful and hilarious. Throughout the film, a dusty, oldish visual look gives the film a cheesy, almost 1990s quality that helps show the actions as foolish and silly.
My main problem with understanding this film is Nick Cage's performance. He is normally such a bad actor that it is not clear that he's in with Herzog on his joke. It almost feels like Cage is doing his normal, terrible super-earnest over-acting style here (think: The Weather Man or World Trade Center). In fact, his terrible acting partly adds to the wonderful terribleness of the picture. He is every bad big-name actor who has ever played such a screwed up cop. He is Denzel Washington in Training Day (yes - I know he won an Oscar for that, but he was terrible in that horrible film), Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon or Daid Caruso in Kiss of Death.
Viewed as a totally sarcastic story, this movie is mostly enjoyable - though not at all perfect. It is nearly post-modern and pretty funny. Part of the reason I like it is because it is so terrible - lovably terrible. I do hope it doesn't become a franchise and that this is just the second of a limited set of these movies. (God help us if not!)
I guess that after having said all of this, the film could be for Herzog what The Rainmaker was for Francis Ford Coppolla or what Jade was for William Friedkin - a sign that a once great artist is willing to make a movie to put food on the table and is happy to sell his craft for peanuts. I don't think it is one of those cases; I think this is a great, smart director thumbing his nose at the cliches of a tired genre and laughing to himself that there are people who won't pick up the subtlety.
Stars: 2 of 4
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