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65 out of 91 people found the following review useful: The Nicolas Cage we loved is BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, 24 October 2009 Author: k-comm from United Kingdom
I just watched this at London Film Festival & went in expecting to hate it as I loved the original. But I have to say, the film is excellent, certainly Cage's best film & best performance since Leaving Las Vegas. Herzog has done a brilliant job & the film stands on it's own, apart from the Ferrara film. I won't spoil bits by mentioning them, but the film has several stand-out memorable scenes worth the price of admission alone. Herzog has always said that training for making films is 'life' not a stuffy film studies class etc. If you're familiar with his work or sensibilities, you'll get even more insight into how cool this guy is after watching this film. I look fwd to watching it again when it releases and getting the DVD!!
75 out of 119 people found the following review useful: BLt: PoCNO rocks! There is no other way to describe it., 18 September 2009 Author: saareman (alan.teder@sympatico.ca) from Toronto, Canada
Seen at the Toronto International Film Festival Sept 17, 2009.First off it is important to note that the Bad Lieutenant name was imposed by producer Edward Pressman in the hopes of building a future franchise. As Herzog said, a better franchise would be based on his title Port of Call New Orleans. The combined title is a compromise which Werner Herzog was willing to agree to.Herzog was fun as always at the introductory remarks and the Q&A with TIFF programmer Colin Geddes. Telling anecdotes such as Cage asking him on the 2nd day of shooting what is his motivation and Herzog telling him not to worry about that, just go with "Evil is bliss" and sometimes "let the pig out!" (from the Bavarian colloquialism "Die Sau rauslassen!" / "Las die Sau raus!").I'll confess that I had my doubts about this one simply based on the BLt title alone, imagining that this was going to be some sort of embarrassing sequel that has been imposed on Herzog for some bizarre contractual obligation reason. Have no fear about that! This is a Herzog movie and a Nicolas Cage on-a-rampage movie with all that those both imply. Even if certain clichés of the genre are adhered to (the prostitute girlfriend, the father who is an ex-cop now "drinking himself to death", etc.) these end up having totally different plot resolutions than you'd expect. Cage's second scene confronting the matron lady and her hairdresser alone is worth the price of admission. I know they don't give Oscars for roles like this (actually, maybe for Denzel they did) but this is the best Nicholas Cage I've seen in years.Comment at the Q&A "I have seen 20 movies at this festival, and this is the most entertaining of all of them!" I couldn't agree more (and BLt:PoCNO was my 22nd). BLt:PoCNO rocks and Herzog rules! Seen at the Elgin Theatre/VISA Screening Room, the 2nd screening of 3 at TIFF 2009.
25 out of 35 people found the following review useful: Cage makes the movie, 23 November 2009 Author: samkay1 from Canada
One thing you can always count on when you go into a Werner Herzog movie is that you can always expect to find a story surrounding a very bizarre individual. With Bad Lieutenant, I saw both Herzog and Nicholas Cage in a new light, or rather a new darkness. Labeled as a black comedy, there should be more emphasis on 'black' than on 'comedy'. The film bears a strong resemblance to the thematically surreal and contrived nature of a Coen Brothers film, but the difference is that this one is more character driven than plot driven. More specifically, this is a film that lives on one performance. Nicholas Cage for the first time in a while has done something worthy of recognition, possibly even award worthy.He plays New Orleans cop Terence McDonagh, recently promoted to Lieutenant. The film follows his latest homicide investigation. Due to a back problem and a drug addiction he is grumpy and unstable. He is sort of an anti- American hero, and the film concludes on a very bizarre note but clever anti- conventional/Hollywood manner.Though not Herzog's best, it is certainly one worth watching. With each film I see from him, past or present he continues to intrigue me, but I think in this case, it might be Nicholas Cage who deserves the most credit. Could there be an Oscar in store?
32 out of 52 people found the following review useful: Great black comedy, 22 November 2009 Author: joe420 from United States
Port of Call is an excellent movie that knows what it is and entertains throughout. If you watch the movie thinking of it as a serious drama you're going to be disappointed. I laughed along with the audience many times during this film and found it to be entertaining the entire time. Although it deals with graphic subject matter that should be depressing it isn't, you could easily buy a bucket of popcorn to go with it. Although the movie was a bit ridiculous I was surprised to actually feel concern for some of the characters at times. The plot was entertaining and keeps your interest. There were a few great lines and Nick Cage gives a great performance, he's fun to watch in this movie. I thought a darkened New Orleans worked great for the setting as well. If you like black comedies and crime dramas go see Port of Call and prepare to be entertained.
41 out of 71 people found the following review useful: a truly different film, vividly acted and directed, 14 September 2009 Author: antoniotierno (antoniotierno@hotmail.com) from Italy
This movie is filled with humor and turns, it's jazzy and entertaining but not that similar to Abel Ferrara's 1992 story, in spite of the title. It features a wonderful and very much involved performance from Nicholas Cage, a lot of very black humor and gets to develop a strong pessimism. The story is appropriately set in New Orleans (during the Hurricane Katrina's aftermath) and mainly shows what occurs to good people when bad people prosper. Nicholas Cage aside, Val Kilmer doesn't probably manages to do much, but Mendes and Dourif deliver convincing performances. Abel Ferrara's "Bad Lieutenant" was a dirty depiction of a strongly damaged detective (played by Harvey Keitel), where, leaving from the illusions of a drug-induced cop, ended up involving a lot of Catholic guilt. Here there's more action and humor than that stuff, not that the movie is shallow but probably it's just a bit more unpretentious.
21 out of 34 people found the following review useful: How have these dudes not worked together yet?, 19 November 2009 Author: thesubstream from Canada
Friday marks the limited release of one of the best films I caught at TIFF this year, Werner Herzog's gloriously unhinged Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans starring the gloriously unhinged Nic Cage. Neither a remake nor an homage nor a sequel to Abel Ferrara's 1992 cult classic Bad Lieutenant, Herzog's film is certainly historically conceptually weird, sharing as a link to Ferrara's film only the idea of a drug-addicted, corrupt cop as a central character. Herzog reportedly tried to have the "Bad Lieutenant" dropped from his film's title, and Ferrara reportedly wished that Herzog would die in an explosion.Cage plays good-cop-turned-bad Terence McDonagh, who descends into corruption and drug addiction after injuring his back during a heroic rescue in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. When not spending time with his call-girl girlfriend Frankie (Eva Mendes), he investigates the death of a family of African immigrants and becomes involved with local drug kingpin Big Fate (Xzibit).Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is the story of a director finding his actor, and vice-versa. Herzog's career (varied though it's been) is for many defined by the five films (Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Nosferatu the Vampyre, Woyzeck, Fitzcarraldo and Cobra Verde) made in the '70's and '80's with the legendarily volatile actor Klaus Kinski, and in Cage Herzog has finally found an actor that can match Kinski's vibrating, bizarre intensity. What other pairing of actor and director could in 2009 make a film in which the lead interrupts a tense procedural cop stake-out scene to remark on a pair of non-existent iguanas looking at him from on a coffee-table? Cage is better in this film than he has been in anything in years, maybe a decade or more, and his frazzled, unravelling, wide-eyed glee is used by Herzog in a way that renders it human and real, where it would be scenery-chewing in the hands of almost any other filmmaker. The film is a gloriously weird explosion of creativity bound within the still-somehow-convincing shell of a cop drama. While it lacks the rote good-guy-bad-guy tension and shoot-out thrills of your classic thriller, it more than makes up for that loss with unhinged, weird, maniac creative freedom. I particularly liked the moment when we learn after-the-fact that we've been watching a scene from the point of view of a crocodile, for some reason. 8.5/10.
21 out of 38 people found the following review useful: Great entertainment with Nick Cage at his best, 30 November 2009 Author: Garrett Vega from Latvia
The Bad Lieutenant is a touching story of Terence McDonagh, a corrupted cop on his epic quest to screw up his life beyond repair, later trying to repair it by screwing up some more.We don't know for sure if Terence was like this before or just after his back trauma. The back pain resulted in a Vicodin prescription, but soon Terrance moved up the chain with cocaine and other substances. That, along with him being a not so good guy in general, can make him more dangerous than some criminals. To quote another review, he only Serves and Protects himself. He is the Law and the Law exists for his personal benefit. But soon everything goes to hell, as he starts to mess with dangerous people that ignore the law themselves.This is one of Cage's finest performances as the corrupt cop, drug addict, rapist, thief and paranoid wreck with a strange habit of seeing iguanas that aren't there. Cage really showed that he in fact does have talent, which he sadly usually wastes on crap movies like Ghost Rider. But here he's simply brilliant.Though it was supposed to be a remake of the 1992 film of the same name, it's not. Apart from the title and corrupt cop theme, it has absolutely nothing to do with it. In fact, it's actually a lot better, richer with colorful characters and generally more crazy than the 1992 film, with Cage doing things that would make the original lieutenant shy.The movie is really entertaining, dark and bizarre but also well written and has some humor to brighten things up a bit. All in all, it's one of the best and most entertaining movies I've seen this year.
4 out of 5 people found the following review useful: Not as expected, but I liked it, 13 December 2009 Author: siderite from Romania
From the previous comments from movie critics and normal viewers alike I thought this is going to be a masterpiece of acting from Nicholas Cage, a rendering of a truly bad good guy, a true "anti hero" not the pansies that passed as such lately.Maybe that skewed my perspective, but to me, Nicholas Cage played his usual semi maniacal role and it was not something special (for him at least). I know that he played in a lot of crappy films lately, but he was doing similar roles in movies like Face Off and National Treasure.Also, the anti hero was not a pansy, but not a true anti hero either. More of a western sheriff cowboy thing. And at a certain point in the film it started to annoy me. However, at the end, I thought the whole thing was vindicated. And I will explain why and why I believe the ending saved the movie from mediocrity.After a twisted path in which Cage's character lied, stole, threatened and even arranged things so that people get killed, everything falls into place like magic and all in a series of scenes that practically end everything on a positive note. You see, this kind of movie practice is best found in "he was dead" movies, when at the end we see that he was dead all along or that everything was in his head or something similar.THAT saved the film, because it made the movie show how a good guy can get at the very edge of things, then ended it with a separate chapter almost completely different in spirit than what came before. And that makes the viewer understand that in this case it ends well, but it might just as well ended up in disaster. I thought that in itself was pretty brilliant.
9 out of 15 people found the following review useful: Taking the Mickey..., 22 November 2009 Author: Demian Cypher from Toronto, Ontario
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Viewers of the film who think it and/or Cage's acting are simply 'bad' or 'cheesy' are missing the point of what Herzog is doing. Then again, viewers who think it's a wild and crazy artistic take on the crime/noir genre (i.e. the 'it's different/wacky/quirky, therefore it's good' crowd) are also probably missing the point - especially if they think the lizards and dancing soul are 'symbolic' or 'represent' things.(Warning - spoilers ahead...) What Herzog seems to be doing is serving up a parody of mainstream cinematic conventions, especially those which verge towards melodrama in their earnest attempts to be 'meaningful', 'emotional', etc. From the opening scene establishing the character as a 'wounded hero' and giving a motivation for his drug addiction with which we can sympathize (Keitel's character in the original had none, as far as I can remember), to the ending where his problems all get resolved in a single scene (!), followed by a flash forward to when his girlfriend is pregnant and his family is back on track, the film serves up one melodramatic movie cliché after another (and skewers them, not through the familiar Mel Brooks/'Scary Movie'-style of parody-through-references, but purely through the ridiculousness of it all and the over-the-top performance from Cage).The scenes that aren't clichés (i.e. the soul dancing, the alligator/iguanas, the last shot of the fish tank) work as disruptions from the plot which highlight how ridiculous it is, like the way Bunuel would use a narrative digression to 'take the mickey' out of a melodramatic plot. Nonsensical lines like "Do fish have dreams?" or "I'll kill the three of you (dramatic pause) till the break of dawn", delivered by Cage as if they were poetic, clever or menacing, make fun of both the typical cool 'one-liners' found in action and crime movies and the pseudo-poetic, supposedly 'deep and meaningful' lines found in many 'indie' movies.Perhaps the most convincing signs that the film isn't meant to be serious, but is ridiculous on purpose, are the over-the-top acting of the abusive john that Cage kicks out of his girlfriend's hotel room (repeating 'whoa' and pausing to say something like 'oh yeah' to the kid waiting in the hall outside!), which proves it's not just Cage who was told to overact, and the last shot - held for quite a long time on two characters sitting under a fish tank (coming after the aforementioned "Do fish have dreams?" line which makes it seem like it has some sort of 'deep' or symbolic meaning), with Cage cracking up just when we're growing impatient for something to happen, followed by a sudden cut to black. Even the casting of Val Kilmer in the role of an unimportant character who had next to nothing to do and could have been played by anyone seems to have parodic intentions (what has Kilmer done recently?).As some reviewers have pointed out, the actual plot, once you remove the stylized direction and acting, is the sort of thing you'd expect to find in a low quality, straight-to-DVD mystery/thriller. Especially when you consider that many of Herzog's earlier films, while definitely being bizarre or 'quirky', weren't cheesy or campy but had definite depth of humanity to them, it really seems like here he's making fun of the generic, conventional material he was given, rather than taking it seriously.In a way, it reminded me of "The Room", but done deliberately with a larger budget, more technical polish and with an established star and director who have proved their abilities in the past - all of which make it more likely for viewers to take what they're seeing seriously, instead of seeing through the absurdity of it all. Or perhaps a better comparison would be "Adaptation" (also starring Cage!) which parodies mainstream film-making conventions in a similar way in its final half hour (and there's even an alligator!)
3 out of 4 people found the following review useful: Neat take at Hollywood style movie making, 26 December 2009 Author: raimund-berger from Switzerland
It took me some time into the film to actually figure out how it worked. Because, starring Nic Cage, I would have expected it to be some kind of drama or crime film. It isn't though, and I realized that only half way in.I don't really remember which scene exactly it was that gave me that eye opener, but I believe it was when Nic had to give up his gun to internal affairs and complained to his father, in a seriously depressed manner, that "a man without a gun is not a man". At which point I was bound to realize that this film was in fact a variant of a parody, albeit very subtle as such.I mean, things just connected. The over-sized Dirty Harry style weapon. How he carried it, sticking out there out of his pants. And, after all, how he effectively used it. Namely just for show and never really shooting anybody.And as much as the "man without a gun" bit connected with it's context to form a neat irony, all the other stuff did too. At which point the enjoyment really started, also of the first half of the film in hindsight. Because, as said, pieces fell into place.Apart from the delicious humor, I found the story line to be sufficiently complex to keep me entertained and wondering about the various characters and their motives. On top of that, I felt truly enchanted by some lovely poetry in form of a "fish dream" theme which get's picked up at various points in the film, as the "silver spoon" theme does in quite nice ways.So altogether, for anybody not knowing what to expect, this isn't an art house film. It isn't an action, crime or drama film either. It's a very subtle satire, maybe best compared to a toned down Bunuel film if such a thing existed, but with Hollywood entertainment style production features. Very likable, really.Incidentally, there's apparently been some heat about this being an alleged remake of Ferrara's film. Well, it isn't apart from the very rough plot basics. Otherwise, those films totally differ in style and meaning. Each of them doesn't take away anything from the other.
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