Terrence McDonagh (Nicolas Cage) is a bad cop who after doing for once a good deed is left with chronic back pain. Six months later he is completely out of control.
This is a great movie.
For many years I was afraid to delve into Werner Herzog works. His reputation as the quintessential mad director beloved by critics worldwide convinced me that he was one of those incredibly boring type who spent half an hour on panoramic shots a la Jim Jarmusch.
Instead he is quite the opposite of that. This movie literally never stops; it’s a relentless assault on our sense and convictions with a wonderful sense of pace and a willingness to do anything.
There is also a quite complicated and interesting plot that actually in the end is not really that important. As the self explanatory title points this is the story of the titular Bad Lieutenant meltdown, and what an amazing meltdown it is.
Herzog points in the making of that he tried to depict what a calls “The bliss of evil” and I think he succeeded wonderfully. When I thought that nothing more could happen with McDonagh he managed to surprise me, multiple times.
Of course nothing could have happened without a strong turn from the lead actor and Nicolas Cage really did deliver this time with an exceptional turn. He doesn’t play the lieutenant, he literally inhabits him. In the entire movie he moved like a person always high on some kind of drug or with pain in the back. I can’t talk about the former but regarding the latter, suffering from back pain myself, even if not that bad, I must say that I recognized myself in his oblique movements.
He is not only very good, he is also incredibly daring in his performance going all in with a series of despicable activities that would have scared away most other actors.
This is really a very funny but also very intelligent movie, a rare beast in today’s Hollywood.
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