041 - Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans (2009)

DVD Box

Bad Lieutenant is, firstly and foremost, a very strange film. Nicolas Cage plays Terence McDonagh, a rogue detective who is more concerned with getting his next drug hit rather than solving crime. Somehow he has made it to the rank of Lieutenant, mostly by doing the right thing at the right time.

He is badly in debt with a gambling addiction, his girlfriend (Eva Mendes) is a prostitute and his family are alcoholics. As he trawls through the film in a hallucinogenic state, he gradually tries to solve his many problems, while attempting to solve a mass murder case.

Theatrical Poster

Bad Lieutenant is a very difficult film to follow, mostly because of its surreal nature and during the hallucination scenes and the fact that the film flits between each of Terance's problems. It was only during the last 15 minutes of the film that I actually understand what was going on, so, based on this, much of the alleged comedy was lost on me.

There was nothing wrong with the acting - Nicholas Cage played his character well considering his job most of the time was to find the nearest route to cocaine.

The film tries something that Lethal Weapon already had - a cop that has gone bad; it does well in places, but the difficult-to-follow storyline meant that Bad Lieutenant ended up being bad film.

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