Summary:
A drug and gambling addicted detective working in post-Katrina New Orleans investigates the brutal killings of five Senegalese immigrants.
My Thoughts:
Recently I watched Abel Ferrara’s controversial but captivating film “Bad Lieutenant”, and, as we at TMM were just gearing up for our Nicolas Cage series kick off, I decided there was no better time to check out Werner Herzog’s sister film: “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.” I think both films are worth watching, though, honestly, I think “Bad Lieutenant” is a far superior film on a lot of levels. “Port of Call New Orleans” is a good movie, but it’s also pretty uneven; there are a few weird directing and editing choices; many of the performances from the name actors are fine, but from the minor characters performances are pretty spotty; the cinematography sometimes looks great and other times looks like it was shot with a Go Pro. Herzog has always been a director that likes to try new things, and it seems to me that some of those things worked in this film, and some of them didn’t; as a result, we have a film that feels pretty middling.
“What are these f*ckin’ iguanas doing on my coffee table?”
Terence McDonagh (Nicolas Cage, “Mandy”) is a Lieutenant in the New Orleans Police Department whom is put in charge of an investigation of the murders of five Senegalese immigrants that are believed to be connected to drug dealers. As McDonagh and his partner Stevie Pruit (Val Kilmer, “Tombstone”) investigate the murders, McDonagh also finds time to deal with his prostitute girlfriend Frankie (Eva Mendes, “Ghost Rider”), his bookie Ned (Brad Dourif, “Seed of Chucky”), another crooked cop named Heidi (Fairuza Balk, “Return to Oz”), his alcoholic mother Genevieve (Jennifer Coolidge, “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events”) and his recovering alcoholic father Pat (Tom Bower, “Die Hard 2”).
I find it hard not to make comparisons between this film and the one that inspired it, so I’m going to get those comparisons out of the way first. This film deals with many of the same themes that Abel Ferrara’s film dealt with. This is mostly a morality tale, though, instead of using a kind of religious rediscovery as the catalyst for the lieutenant’s change of pace, this film simply uses the want/need to get sober as a catalyst for change. Maybe it’s just my own personal background and biases, but I personally didn’t find Terence’s journey to be nearly as interesting or redemptive as the unnamed lieutenant in Ferrara’s film. Terence’s journey isn’t as dark as our unnamed lieutenant, and though he does commit crimes, he’s horrible to women, and he moves through the underworld, he never seemed to reach the level of depravity and hopelessness that Harvey Keitel reached in the original film. To me, it felt as if Terence was making poor choices, but his life was still okay. He has a girlfriend that loves him, though they share many of the same vices; his bookie seems slightly more reasonable, even friendly, when compared to Keitel’s bookie; even the level of addiction seems less intensive. Where Keitel’s character seems to absolutely devour drugs with ferocious appetite, really focusing on the addiction part of his drug-addicted character, Terrance’s character focuses more on the weird stuff that he sees and does while on these drugs. Keitel’s character feels like Harry Goldfarb from “Requiem for a Dream” where Terrance feels like Hunter S. Thompson from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”; both characters are drug addicts, but one seems to have more fun with the drugs than he seems to struggle with them, at least, until the end of the film.
I thought Cage gave a pretty remarkable performance, though, if I’m being honest, he never really quite blew me out of the water. There were a few strange acting choices, like, for instance, whenever he referred to a character named “G” he gave a very forced laugh. I think Cage is often best when he plays a character who is slightly unhinged, and he is that way through most of this film’s runtime. I was actually more surprised to see some up and coming actors make small appearances in this film; Michael Shannon (“Take Shelter”) makes a brief appearance, and Shea Whigham (“Kong: Skull Island”) gave a very memorable performance as one of Frankie’s horrible clients. Val Kilmer was fine, I suppose.
SPOILERS ABOUT ENDING
While I thought the overall storyline was fairly interesting, I never quite bought Terrance’s character arc. His character never really seems to want to get clean, so the ending of this film, when we flash forward a year and see that Frankie is now clean and pregnant, and Terrance is still struggling to get sober, feels totally unearned. The last time we saw Terrance, he had just planted a crackpipe as evidence on Xzibit’s character. Though he has succeeded in cracking a case, he shows no real want to reform his ways. When we flash forward, we see that Terrance is still struggling with his coke addiction, and he ends up running into a former criminal who we’d met earlier in the film. The criminal comes to Terrance’s aid and speaks with him about getting sober. The whole scene feels cheap. Honestly, I wish we would’ve just ended with Xzibit’s (“8 Mile”) character being arrested and hinting at Terrance’s eventual sobriety. Why did we need this coda, showing us for certain that Terrance has changed? It could’ve been far more powerful (and believable) if Herzog would’ve just left this bit off.
Verdict:
I didn’t hate this film, but watching it a day after I watched “Bad Lieutenant” was probably a bad idea. There are too many similarities, and one film is clearly better than the other. As a whole this is an entertaining movie that provides some interesting concepts and some funny performances, but it fails to provide the metaphysical moral musings that made the original “Bad Lieutenant” so great. If you stumble across this film on Netflix, it’s not a bad way to kill two hours.
Review Written By: