Nic Cage returns!

Bad Lieutenant – Werner Herzog

The name, the look, the marketing all pointed towards a horrible, straight-to-DVD piece of shit that wouldn’t deserve any praise or audience to love but Werner Herzog’s new film Bad Lieutenant surprises you on many levels and shows that you can’t judge a Nic Cage movie by its...well, it’s Nic Cage. The rubbish poster for the film is littered with great quotes of how surprisingly good the film is but in an unusual way where you’ll try to want to pin point why this film is good and why it’s a great performance from Nic Cage. Nic Cage at the moment seems to have a vendetta against everyone who calls him out for his shocking performances and his horrible hair, but lately he’s been shouting up the critics with some ranged and amazing performances including Kick-Ass and this film. Here he shows his freedom to take a role that probably didn’t have much and take it to the next level, one where you’ll remember him here for his badass-ness. Sure his hair looks a mess and sure he may lack the certain charm he used to have, but Nic Cage is mother fucking Nic Cage, that dude just is awesome. The story just uses his awesomeness to further the fact how fucking cool he is. Nic Cage plays Nic Cage as a police lieutenant who breaks the rules by sleeping with prostitutes, being heavily involved with all sorts of drugs and with making deals with gang leaders. You’ll want to see this film just for him.

The epic story shows Terrence, a New Orleans Police Sergeant, addicted to pain meds which leads to being addicted to heavy drugs such as cocaine and heroin, he is assigned to a murder case that involve immigrants from Senegal who end up being killed because of drug leaders in the local neighbourhoods. Along with the murder case, Terrence also sees himself in the middle of trouble with a bookie that he owes money to, along with a relationship with a prostitute that leads to double cross of a very popular and influential man and Terrence soon turns to his dysfunctional family who also throw him some problems. A lot is going on but it never seems too much to take and is a welcome return for a film to be packed of action and adventure and not to slow down. The humour is dark, the acting is sublime and the whole film just is very entertaining on a basic level.

Nic Cage makes this film worthwhile is watch alone, along with the fact that it’s a very well written story told in an artistic and stylised way.

7/10

Simon Childs