Unlike Keitel, Cage makes being ‘Bad’ look good
Harvey Keitel is the original bad lieutenant.
He is a New York police detective who is addicted to heroin, has a gambling problem and even forces female suspects to mimic sexual acts as he watches and masturbates.
Life of sin · In Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Nicolas Cage puts his own zany and erratic take on Harvey Keitel’s original drug-addicted bad cop from the 1992 film Bad Lieutenant. - Photos courtesy of First Look Studios
Director Abel Ferrara’s 1992 film, Bad Lieutenant, introduced audiences to the worst police officer imaginable, and it was thought then that nothing could top Keitel’s performance.
But now someone worse is competing.
Werner Herzog’s new film, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, also has a bad lieutenant, but this time it is Nicolas Cage as he brings ruthlessness to a whole new level.
Herzog’s film is not a remake, even though both films share the same name and feature a similar drug-addicted rogue police officer who does more harm than good. What separates the two films enormously is that each respective lieutenant is an example of an opposite emotional extreme and is portrayed with his own ferocity that convinces the audience to either sympathize or laugh along with him.
Ferrara’s bad lieutenant is breaking apart. His sporadic moments of isolated intensity fuel his rage and his multiple vices to the point that everything spirals out of control. He is a desperate man who turns to drugs and extremely deviant sexual acts to counter his ongoing desperation, which becomes the focus of the film.
Watching Keitel take heroin and then disrupt his own high with another uncontrollable act of panic is gut-wrenching to witness, and because of scenes like this — and there are more than a few — the original Bad Lieutenant has been classified by many as a dangerous film.
Dangerous it certainly is, but at the same time it has a very redeeming quality about it. The bad lieutenant is on a quest for redemption. Because he learns he cannot redeem himself, he instead chooses to redeem a criminal who is just as perverse as himself.
After all the sick and lecherous acts he commits throughout the film, he does achieve redemption, even if he does not live to enjoy it.
And as moral as that is, the original’s ending is what inevitably makes it succumb to the brutal force of Cage in Herzog’s film and ultimately establishes Keitel as a more sympathetic protagonist than a blatantly deviant.
Cage is energetic. His drug addiction fuels his erratic personality and, though it does appear comical, underneasth the comedy is blatant amorality. Instead of the drug-related and offensive sexual adventures filled with despair and the overall sense of ragged isolation that Keitel conveys, Cage is vibrant with energy.
He is a clown on coke with a .44 Magnum stuffed in his pants, but somehow he keeps getting promoted. Cage fills his nostrils with garbage and then walks into a room filled with other detectives, where the first thing he notices is that there are two iguanas on the table and that they are staring right at him.
“What the fuck are these iguanas doing on my coffee table?” he asks everyone. The iguanas might not be there for everyone else who is not on drugs, but, for Cage, they are his reality.
The drugs, violence and unlimited power that society continues to give Cage’s character are all part of his ongoing circus that is never affected by the despair that Keitel’s lieutenant is plagued with. While Keitel is looking for redemption, Cage is looking for the next high, and that is what makes him dangerous.
Ferrara’s film is depressing while Herzog’s film is fun. As an audience member, you do not pity Cage as you would Keitel. Instead, you want him to shake down a young couple for drugs and then laugh out loud as you watch him smoke a crack pipe and proceed to have his way with the female suspect while he makes her boyfriend watch.
The momentum that is fueling Cage’s character is explicitly shared with the audience to the point where you want to join along. He literally seduces the audience into joining in on all the fun he is having, because that is what it is for his character: fun.
Ferrara’s film is certainly commendable and should not be overshadowed by Herzog’s, but in regard to who is the worst “bad lieutenant,” the answer would undoubtedly be Cage. As an audience we know how horrible he is yet we still want him to win.
Cage’s performance allows the audience to feel good about being so bad. He is the real evil because he makes it look so cool. It is hard not to speak along with his character when he proclaims, “I love it. I just love it!”
Because after all, we love it just as much as he does.