http://www.nlff.co.uk/2010/the-bad-lieutenant/ Northern Lights Film Festival 2010 Thu, 15 Jul 2010 04:57:17 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 http://www.nlff.co.uk/2010/the-bad-lieutenant/comment-page-1/#comment-62 John Weddell Tue, 30 Mar 2010 12:25:21 +0000 http://www.nlff.co.uk/2010/?p=370#comment-62 The camera trails a snake as it coils through flood water, and disappears between the bars of a jail. Imagined iguanas flop about in the middle of a stake-out, as the Bad Lieutenant wigs out. Werner Herzog has bent the straight-to-DVD cop thriller slash Nicolas Cage vehicle to his will. He actually plays it fairly straight- up to a point. Tracking unexpectedly close to crime scenes; taking in the squad-room banter, the streets of after-the-flood New Orleans. But Herzog has as keen an eye for shooting the incongruous as the Lieutenant has for lifting narcotics, and it is these moments, alongside the laugh/laughing-out-loud derangement of Nicolas Cage (a man who long ago took to heart Adam Ant’s adage that ‘ridicule is nothing to be scared of’) that really lift this film above the tired norm. Cage ends up looking almost dignified, or at least wise in his decisions for the first time in a long time, and every stock situation in the book is either twisted absurdly, shot full of poetry, or made weirdly poignant. The best part is, these turns arise from the narrative so unexpectedly that the imagination on display is actually moving. The risks somehow really work. There is a fantastic supporting cast (Val Kilmer! Brad Dourif as the bookie!), a great choice of blues tunes, and the unanswerable question “Do fish have dreams?” It’s nowhere near as shocking as the Ferrera film, but it isn’t supposed to be. Highly recommended. The camera trails a snake as it coils through flood water, and disappears between the bars of a jail. Imagined iguanas flop about in the middle of a stake-out, as the Bad Lieutenant wigs out. Werner Herzog has bent the straight-to-DVD cop thriller slash Nicolas Cage vehicle to his will. He actually plays it fairly straight- up to a point. Tracking unexpectedly close to crime scenes; taking in the squad-room banter, the streets of after-the-flood New Orleans. But Herzog has as keen an eye for shooting the incongruous as the Lieutenant has for lifting narcotics, and it is these moments, alongside the laugh/laughing-out-loud derangement of Nicolas Cage (a man who long ago took to heart Adam Ant’s adage that ‘ridicule is nothing to be scared of’) that really lift this film above the tired norm. Cage ends up looking almost dignified, or at least wise in his decisions for the first time in a long time, and every stock situation in the book is either twisted absurdly, shot full of poetry, or made weirdly poignant. The best part is, these turns arise from the narrative so unexpectedly that the imagination on display is actually moving. The risks somehow really work. There is a fantastic supporting cast (Val Kilmer! Brad Dourif as the bookie!), a great choice of blues tunes, and the unanswerable question “Do fish have dreams?” It’s nowhere near as shocking as the Ferrera film, but it isn’t supposed to be. Highly recommended.

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