Both films are manic, 'Port of Call' in a surreal way quite appropriate for its director Werner Herzog and it's star Nicholas Cage. The original 'Bad Lieutenant' is more fouced on the gritty, it stars Harvey Kietel in the lead in some very on the nose casting. Kietel's never formulary named character is supplying police recoverd drugs back to dealers, he abuses cocain, herion, alcohol, and frequents prostitutes despite being married and having a family. Throughout the film he countinues to double down in betting on a fictional Dodgers/Mets World Series getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. His actual police work seems very secondary to his life.
The film is not just a catalogue of one man's sins however, but seeks to probe into his soul. B.L. becomes obsessed with the case of a nun brutally raped in a church, she knows who attacked her because they are from the neighborhood but refuses to name them because she has forgivin them. This blows something in the Keitel characters mind, an embittered nominal Catholic who views the Church as a racket, combined with his own numerous crimes and personal sins (including a disturbing scene of a kind of oral rape), he can't comprehend such grace. His life already in free fall this adds an existential element to his criseses and opens a small window onto a potetenial salavation. Kietel gives a powehouse performance here and elevates what at first seems just an explotive and dirty movie into one groping at the sublime. A real surprise of a watch that I am still thinking about. ***1/2
No comments:
Post a Comment