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| The poster and title of Werner Herzog's movie, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans unfortunately isn't very appealing |
QUICK REVIEW:
Nicolas Cage (Leaving Las Vegas (1995)) gets up out of the mire of the many many awful films that he has starred in especially in the new millennium, and shows in Port of Call that he's still got it.
Here he plays an addict on collision course with his surroundings, - the kind of part that he has shown that he masters more than once before.
The first part of this gangster/police drug crime drama is a bit confusing and slow, but as everything slowly begins to clash together in the sad, dilapidated post-Katrina New Orleans, Port of Call rises as a film, and has some likeness to Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher (1996).
The cast is cool and includes Jennifer Coolidge, Michael Shannon, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer and Fairuza Balk, but those that really distinguish themselves here are the rapper/actor/TV-personality Alvin 'Xzibit' Joiner (The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008)) and Brad Dourif (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)). And Cage, whose scenes under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol are especially memorable. In Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, he's a really bad cop...
The film is directed by prolific German master director Werner Herzog (Rescue Dawn (2006)), who is still very active as a filmmaker, and whose next film is Queen of the Desert (2015) a biopic partially set in Morocco, with Nicole Kidman and Robert Pattinson.
Port of Call is not a remake or a sequel to Abel Ferrara's masterpiece Bad Lieutenant (1992), but a 'rethought', Herzog has stated. He has also said that he has never seen the original or any of Ferrara's films, (almost as though he takes a special pride in that fact.) Ferrara on the other hand has publicly wished that people that make remakes would [be] "all in the same streetcar, and it blows up!" A strange, unpleasant thing to say, and curious since Ferrara has also made at least one remake, Body Snatchers (1993). - Has he forgotten this very forgettable film himself?
Related reviews:
Bad Lieutenant (1992) or, World of Hurt
Nicholas Cage: Adaptation (2002) or, Charlie Kaufman's Fictional Life
Nicholas Cage and Brad Dourif: Amos & Andrew (1993) or, He's Going for the Stereo!
Watch the trailer for this late-night treat right here
Budget: 25 mil. $
Box office: 10.4 mil. $
= Big flop
How did you like Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant?
Abel Ferrara, any thoughts on him?
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