The roles Nicolas Cage takes often require a certain unhinged quality that is no doubt influenced by his own eccentricity. Thanks to memes and YouTube compilations, Cage's most batshit moments have won him a cult following; equal parts admiration and mockery. Each film he's involved in, whilst frequently being awful direct-to-DVD bullshit inexplicably cooked up within the studio system and serving to pay off his enormous debts, will provide some classic Cage, whatever the overall artistic quality. Nevertheless, the actor's fans (of whom I am certainly one) believe that he works best when paired with a director in possession of a singular vision.
There are directors with a singular vision. And then there's Werner Herzog.
Herzog uses William Finkelstein's script as a sort of loose framework for his trippy vision of a man's descent into drug-fuelled madness in a decrepit, post-Katrina New Orleans. The city plays the role of the other main character; its ruined beauty ever-emphasised by Peter Zeitlinger's unsettling cinematography. Cage's Terrence McDonagh is a tyrant, but New Orleans never concedes him the control he'd like to exert.
Finkelstein's dialogue might seem kind of wooden on paper. I can't imagine "mind if I light one up?" bears the same neurotic comedic weight as when delivered by Cage, and I'm unsure as to whether the classic "oh yeah" guy could conceivably have been scripted outside of the surreal environment of Herzog's New Orleans. The director's authorial mark is unmistakable, particularly the tour-de-force of filmmaking that is the (I believe unscripted) scene in which Cage, tripping absolute balls, walks in on a surveillance operation and notices aforementioned "fuckin' iguanas," before the plot is sidelined as a soulful slow-jam kicks in and Herzog cuts to the iguanas' point of view, flittering between the two animals' lines of sight with heavily impressionistic camerawork, Cage staring on in the background in suspicious wonderment.
It's a nasty film. Cage's character does all sorts of horrible shit, and mostly gets away with it; pulling out an ailing old lady's breathing tube ("Maybe you should just drop dead, you selfish cunt. Sucking up your family's inheritance through that fucked oxygen tube!) , having sex with a young woman in front of her boyfriend in return for lack of conviction for the crack cocaine he just stole from them ("Where the rock at? C'mon, who's got the kibble?!"), abusing his power by doing nothing at all as Xzibit's crew ("G! Hahahahaha!") dump a suspiciously corpse-shaped package in the river. He's crippled for life from one time he reluctantly did a good deed, and fuck is he compensating for it. Now he has an economical attitude to the law, evidenced by the fact his girlfriend is a prostitute, with whom he bonds over Class A drugs. She's played by a perfectly vulnerable and, yes, sexy Eva Mendes. But when it seems like it can only go downhill for Lt. McDonagh, every single subplot is resolved in a hilariously lazy fashion.
That's not a spoiler. Bad Lieutenant's not about plot. There is one, primarily concerning a murder investigation, but it's incidental. While life changes around Cage's character, he stays the same; a drug-addicted asshole mess. Herzog says the film is about "the bliss of evil," and people brush the cop's evil under the carpet, or enable him, or don't notice. There are extraordinarily tender moments of sadness, hope and pathos with his wreck of family, jarringly juxtaposed with his frenzied, gut-bustingly funny madness as Cage's remarkably accurate imitation of drug abuse evolves to reflect the uncut crack that comes into his possession somewhere along the line of the non-plot.
Some could interpret this film as a gritty crime thriller, but by the time Cage is staring ecstatically at a dead man's soul breakdancing to a jaunty harmonica tune, it becomes pretty obvious that it's simply one of the most absurd comedies ever made, in the greatest possible way. I urge this blog's reader to get their hands on this film immediately. Once attainment is accomplished, get the kibble, sit down with your lucky crackpipe, and light one up!
