When Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant was released 17 years ago and slapped with the scarlet “A” of an NC-17 rating, the film’s shock value overwhelmed any discussion of its aesthetic value. Given the extreme badness of Harvey Keitel’s out-of-control detective—and Ferrara’s eagerness to live up to his billing as the scuzzy Martin Scorsese—that’s somewhat understandable. Between a drunken three-way, a nun getting gang-raped (intercut with Jesus screaming from the cross), a virtual tutorial in how to take heroin, a notorious scene where Keitel harasses a couple of underage girls, and random incidents of gambling, thieving, and drug use, it can be hard to look at Bad Lieutenant as anything but provocation for its own sake. But Ferrara’s tale of sin and redemption has a raw, unvarnished power that’s embodied by Keitel’s performance, and the years have preserved it as an equally potent street-level look at a city.
