The new Nicolas Cage/Werner Herzog film is now out on DVD and Blu-Ray.
Terence McDonagh (Nicolas Cage) finds himself working the beat in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He shows compassion and helps a trapped, drowning prisoner at the submerged police station, leaving himself with chronic back pain. Six months later he finds he can only alleviate his pain with increasingly harder drugs that have left him addicted. When an immigrant family is murdered in their home, Terence is tasked with finding the killers and discovering what link a local drug baron has to it all.


You don't need to have seen the original 1992 Bad Lieutenant to see this version (Keitel and Cage's characters are totally different people), but it might help if you've seen a Werner Herzog film before. This film takes some very strange and bizarre turns and those who've seen Herzog at work may have an added appreciation of the film. A perfect example is the scene where a gangster is gunned down by the drug baron Big Fate. As his corpse lay on the floor, Terence demands he shoots him again as 'his soul is still dancing', to which we are treated to Terence's vision of a breakdancing corpse, soundtracked by the same music used for the infamous chicken dance sequence in Herzog's 1977 film Stroszek.

The setting also adds a lot to the films. Keitel was confined to the streets, surrounded by car horns and the bustle of a big city; Cage drives around the ravaged New Orleans, most of which resembles a shanty town. When you set a film in modern day New Orleans, there has to be at least the hint of a political agenda. You could argue that the American government has done little to fix this broken city, and the further descent into drug dependency is a result of that, not a cause. The immigrant family, looking for a new life in America found themselves segregated, and took the only option available to them. There's a two tier society, and it's through drugs, prostitution or corruption that you get to live comfortably.

It's definitely a good half hour too long, and the procedural aspect bogs down the film in its first hour, but there's some darkly funny moments as it progresses. When the drugs kick in and Cage really lets loose, this film is a treat.
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