BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS

by debbie lynn elias

It’s so good to be bad; especially when you’re Nic Cage and you’ve teamed up with the legendary Werner Herzog for BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS.  Many of you may recall Abel Ferrera’s 1992 “Bad Lieutenant”.  Do not be fooled into thinking Herzog’s version is a remake.  It is far from it.  According to Herzog, “Bad Lieutenant” was the title of a screenplay submitted to him.  However, it was only after speaking with screenwriter William Finkelstein, who was familiar with the Ferrera version, and a “solemn oath” that this would not be a remake,  that Herzog agreed to become involved.    Never liking the title “Bad Lieutenant” and not wanting to confuse the audience, Herzog wanted “Port of Call New Orleans” but ultimately compromised, agreeing to the hybrid BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS.   Typical Herzog, BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS is irreverent, witty and wry, with intricate storytelling and characterizations, one bad ass performance by Nicolas Cage and a surprisingly deft dramatic turn by Jennifer Coolidge.

 

Terence McDonagh is about as tough as they come in New Orleans Police Department.  He is also about as rogue as they come.  A top cop with an insanely subversive streak, McDonagh injures his back saving a prisoner on a flooded cell block during Hurricane Katrina.  As a result of his heroism, McDonagh injures his back and becomes addicted to pain medication. Undeterred by this disabling pain,  McDonagh leaps back into action at the earliest opportunity.  However, his need for chemically assisted pain management gives him a  green light to plunge headfirst into the underworld of crime and illegal and illicit drugs, scoring as many drugs for himself as criminals for the jails.  Setting the stage for our story is the investigation into the murder of five African immigrants and the king pin drug dealer of New Orleans, Big Fate.

 

But McDonagh’s mania doesn’t stop with his drug addiction.  His personality is equally addictive while his heart is actually pure gold.  In love with a high priced hooker, each feeds off the other, plunging deeper into the darkness of their addictions and each other.  Adding to McDonagh’s overall dysfunction is his father, an alcoholic trying to get his own life on track thanks to his new wife, Genevieve.

 

Nicolas Cage is  ****ing AWESOME as Terence McDonagh.   Physically and emotionally, he has the character so finely tuned, so nuanced, so layered, so downright insane.  An absolute joy to watch!   He is pure magic on screen.  One of his best roles in a long time if not the best performance of his career.   According to Cage, “I designed Terrence.   I came in with a vision.   I designed him.  I wanted him to have a bad back.  I was thinking of things like Richard III.  I like to get my body into it.  My mother was a dancer so I like to use the body as part of the instrument of acting.  I saw this back injury as an opportunity to transform myself so that’s where that came from.  The dialect, Werner and I agreed, we don’t need it. [Terrence] could have been from anywhere.  He is a New Orleans cop and his identity was New Orleans.  He took pride in being in the South.  He said, “we don’t hit women down South” so that’s his identity but he could have been from anywhere.   Just like me.”   Also contributing to the brilliance of his performance is the realism of McDonagh’s coked up persona.   In Australia when he read the script, Cage had a massive sinus infection.  He was sent to a doctor who “did this cocaine solution thing and he put it in my nose.  I came out and I just started taking notes. I noticed that I my mouth was completely dry and I was feeling very invincible.  And I started doing the scenes and improvising and coming up with ideas.  I was swallowing a lot.  I was drafting it in the script.  ‘Okay, now this is coke.  This is what he’s doing here.  There’s gonna be a  lot of swallowing.  There’s gonna be a lot of lip smacking.  And then this is heroin.  He’s gonna be a bit itchy.  He’s gonna be nodding.  He’s gonna be much slower.’  I didn’t know when Werner was going to cut the scene with me taking heroin or the scene with me taking the coke, so I had to redraft the direction of the whole performance.”

 

I have never been an Eva Mendes fan but I have to say, as Frankie, she has a great balance with Cage. Described by Cage as having evolved as an actress since working together in “Ghost Rider”, here “but there’s a new, more liquid, soft Eva Mendes that’s very fluid and spontaneous.”  Together, their frenetic drug induced scenes are superb. As Sir Ben Kingsley told me, it takes a talent and skill to play a drunk or drugged out character. It's not something you just "stagger around for." Having said that, both Mendes and Cage are masterful with that side of their respective personas.  

 

One of the most surprising performances comes from Jennifer Coolidge.  Best known for her comedic work, as Genevieve, Coolidge stretches her wings, more than holding her own in this supporting role with a pivotal dramatic performance that is riveting.   Almost missing out on the part, Coolidge thanks her lucky stars for Werner Herzog.  “When I think of when I went in to audition, it felt like it went so horrible and at one point I threw a paper bag and Werner was in the way.  I didn’t know the paper bag had a very hard, like two year old piece of bubblegum in it, and I could have taken Werner’s eye out.  He ducked at the right moment.  It would have been terrible.  You never know how you get a role.  It’s such a flukey thing.”  For Herzog, he knew immediately Coolidge was his Genevieve.  “It was almost instantaneous, this was the one I should have in the film.  And you can’t really verbalize it or explain what it is.  It’s more a question of texture.” 

 

Not to be overlooked are some standout performances by Val Kilmer as Detective Stevie Pruit and Alvin “Xzibit” Joinder as Big Fate. 

 

William Finkelstein’s script is one filled with intricacies, subtleties and sub-plots, all of which are part of the “master story plan”.    Characters are full bodied, flawed and compelling.   Filled with dark, subversive humor in the script, on film, Herzog and Cage take it to the next level believing that “as wild and debased as the character gets, the more he should enjoy himself.”  Leading to the creation of a “strange humor” for Herzog, “it  becomes hilarious and people laugh and respond.”

 

 Weaving all the pieces together, the story comes full circle thanks in large part to Herzog’s direction and the work of his long time cinematographer Peter  Zeitlinger.  Described by Herzog as who “does hand held camera better than anyone would do Steadi-Cam”,  Zeitlinger is a third eye for Herzog.  “He is a man who would stop things for a moment and take the camera down and say, ‘Werner, this scene has no rhythm. ‘ No cinematographer before has spoken to me like that.   He has this feeling of movement and feeling of flow of something and I immediately have to readjust things.”   Given this collaborate effort, as comes as no surprise, interesting camera angles parlay with the wonderful cinematography that really captures the grit and grime of the story and the degradation of the principals.  However, there are trademark signs of Herzog, such as his fascination with animals and their casting in “important” roles.  Not to be missed are his visual stylings of the “demented imaginations of iguanas” which is pure Herzog at his most surreal.

 

Important to BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS is Herzog’s belief in keeping things “open for the unexpected or moments “ such as “Jennifer Coolidge and Eva Mendes fighting over the handbag and the drugs.”  With not much scripting, he left it to “the two young ladies had to sort it out themselves.”  Cage also “ very often took liberty, like in jazz music, to have his own voice and improvise.”  Perhaps one of the greatest compliments for Herzog comes from Cage.  “He moves very quickly.   He has confidence in what I’m going to do and I have confidence in what he’s going to do.”

 

Key to the entire project is the setting of New Orleans, something attributable to Cage.  “I felt that I had to go through a catharsis.  That I had to face my fears.  New Orleans is a very potent city in my life for various reasons.  A combination of different energies - African, French, English, Spanish.  A lot of magic there and I’ve had experiences there.  So I wanted to go back there to confront it and I knew that I would channel that.  Anything could happen.  It could either be a disaster or it could be something beautiful.  So, I was up for the challenge.” 

 

Manic, maddening, mesmerizing.   One of the best films of the year.   BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS.  It’s good to be bad.

 

Terence McDonagh: Nicolas Cage

Frankie Donnenfield: Eva Mendes

Genevieve: Jennifer Coolidge

Steve Pruit: Val Kilmer

 

Directed by Werner Herzog.  Written by William Finkelstein.