What’s this all about?
Hang on, kids. This one is wild.
In 2009, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans was released as a “follow up” to the 1992 Harvey Keitel drama, Bad Lieutenant. It isn’t a sequel. There are no characters (or even a setting) in common between the films, in fact, the titular character in the original (spoilers for a 30-year-old Harvey Keitel film ahead) is famously murdered in the final scene.
So that seems weird, right? Just to make it a little bit weirder, Werner Herzog was tapped to direct. You remember Werner Herzog, right? The intense German director mostly known for documentaries about volcanoes, and pulling a gun on the psychotic Klaus Kinsky, to get him to complete his scenes in Aguirre, the Wrath of God.
In this one, we see the one year journey of a New Orleans police detective who is promoted to Lieutenant after sustaining a back injury rescuing a prisoner from a flooding jail during hurricane Katrina.
He goes down a dark path of drug addiction, crime, violence, and sexual assault.
Everything works out great in the end.
Who is Nick in this one?
Nick plays Terence McDonagh, a New Orleans police detective who smokes crack, robs people, warns drug dealers about upcoming police actions, and dates a prostitute. He’s the son of an alcoholic ex-cop.
Who else is in this one?
Eva Mendes (The McGuffin in Ghost Rider) plays “Frankie,” the drug-addicted prostitute girlfriend. She is very believable in this, and plays the role well. This only further serves to make me wonder what the hell was going on in Ghost Rider.
Val Kilmer (Top Secret) plays Nick’s sometime partner “Steve.” It’s a small role, but I’m always happy to see Val Kilmer on screen.
Xzibit (a rapper, or something) plays a New Orleans drug kingpin who Nick aids in creating a drug empire. He plays the entire role with a “WTF” look on his face, which, honestly, is appropriate.
Jennifer Coolidge (Best in Show) plays against type as Nick’s dad’s drunk, trashy girlfriend. She nails it. I don’t know why she always plays a ditzy blonde idiot in everything else, and seems to cultivate that image. In BLPoCNO (Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans) she looks, acts, and speaks like a normal person.
Brad Dourif (“Doc” from Deadwood) plays Nick’s bookie. It’s a small role, but Dourif is a master character actor, and he absolutely melts into it.
Did you see that?
One of the major subplots involves Nick trying to get evidence in the murder of an immigrant family which was witnessed by a teen boy. This teen boy doesn’t want to testify against the murderer, and frequently flees to hide where his grandmother works (and lives, maybe?) as the caregiver for a wheelchair-bound wealthy old lady.
During one scene, we see the grandmother wheel the old lady into a sitting room. After they enter, the previously open door swings closed, revealing that Nick has apparently broken into the woman’s house, and has been hiding behind the sitting room door, waiting for them to return.
Nick is disheveled (as he is in the entire film), and crammed into the small space behind the door. And, (here’s the “did you see that” part) he’s shaving with an electric razor.
How in the world did this scene come to be?
How long was Nick hiding back there? Are we to think that Nick was hiding and shaving that whole time? The women didn’t hear his electric razor when they passed through the doorway, so does that mean he started shaving after they entered the room, and continued to do so while questioning/threatening them?
It’s an absolutely bizarre scene in an absolutely bizarre movie, but I call it out because I feel like the “normal” thing to do would be to present Nick as a threatening and dangerous character, but instead he was shown as if someone had walked in on him in a locker room. -Michael
At multiple points in this movie, time was taken to focus on a reptile. It was weird and made no sense in the flow of the movie. The camera would zoom up close, change angles, sometimes play this weird music, and even have the souls of the recently killed break dancing, actually break dancing. I know this director is known as an artist, but these bits were just weird. -Sarah
What were Nick’s best parts?
One of the film’s many subplots involves Nick’s mounting debt to his bookie. One scene involves the bookie coming to ther police station to yell at Nick about his lack of payment. Throughout the movie, we see Nick playing a wildly crazy, unpredictable character. In this scene, though, he’s forced to play the “guy trying to have a professional workplace conversation about something wildly inappropriate.”
Nick really shows his range and fast switching ability, and I think we’ve all been in a similar situation (probably not involving fixing college football games, though) where somebody else is talking about an inappropriate topic too loudly, someplace where we’re trying not to draw a bunch of attention, and Nick nails that feel. -Michael
Nick is really in his element playing a creepy, dirty cop. But he really went all the way when he pulled the oxygen tube from the old rich lady to force her caretaker to rat out her grandson. He was terrifying and completely believable that he was absolutely insane. -Sarah
What were Nick’s worst parts?
There are several scenes in which Nick does wildly inappropriate things. It’s the point of the film. Two scenes, however, rang really hollow. In one, Nick questions a suspect in a the suspect’s bedroom while smoking a joint. In the other, Nick smokes crack with the drug kingpin that he’s in business with. In both scenes, Nick portrays the effect of the drugs by yelling incoherently at about an 11 on the intensity scale.
I’m not sure Nick knows how drugs work. -Michael
Nick was detaining some kids from a night club and bullied them as he interrogated them. The guy was begging to be left off, the girl tried to bribe him, then he asked for a hit from her drugs, so she took one and then blew it into his mouth. After only two hits they were fucking. It was a ridiculous and unbelievable transition. -Sarah
How was the movie?
This movie was weird, nonsensical and intense. The imagery was strange and otherworldly, as you’d expect from Werner Herzog. The acting was wild and over the top, as you’d expect from Nicolas Cage. It features very uncomfortable scenes, like the one in which Nick pulls over a young couple, seizes their drugs, then does their drugs while having sex with the woman while holding the man at gunpoint. -Michael
Basically, it was a very good movie. Well written, well acted, and mostly well directed. I did enjoy watching most of it. – Sarah
Yeah, but did you like it?
I think so. It held my interest, and didn’t make me mad. I don’t know what point, if any, it was trying to make, and none of it made me say, “wow,” but it was an interesting story told in an interesting way. -Michael
To be honest, I’m not sure. I hated Nick’s character, but I was supposed to hate him. He starts out bad, gets way worse, then inexplicably has every problem in his life suddenly get fixed, and then he cleans up and becomes good. There’s these weird scenes scattered here and there through to movie that make no sense, but are entertaining. And in the end it just doesn’t make any sense. -Sarah
Where can I watch it?
It’s free on Pluto TV.
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