Not since Snakes On A Plane has the line between movie and Internet meme been as confused as it is with Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage’s remake of the Abel Ferrara shocker Bad Lieutenant. When the project was first announced at Cannes, it immediately triggered reaction along the lines of “What kind of crazy train wreck is that going to be?” And once the wondrously insane teaser trailer went viral, it turned into, “Oh, that kind of a crazy train wreck.” So what about the movie? Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans—the subtitle makes it charmingly unwieldy—is everything the trailer promised and so much more, a batty policier fueled by evocative local color and a sublimely deranged lead performance that recalls Herzog’s work with the wild-eyed Klaus Kinski. It’s not always easy to sort out the legitimately inspired touches from the merely campy ones, but the film has a deranged, go-for-broke spirit that makes such distinctions irrelevant.
