Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Bad Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans If you know the films of Werner Herzog and you know Abel Ferrara’s orginal movie version of Bad Lieutenant, then truly you must be as puzzled as I am about Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Herzog’s “remake” of the sleaze-and-redemption classic.

Frankly, until I watched the trailer I wasn’t entirely sure this movie was for real, just like I didn’t quite believe Jack Palance once played Che Guevara in a Hollywood movie until I rented Che some years ago. I still recall Herzog’s improvised speech deriding “artsy fartsy” movies and championing Dirty Harry in Julien Donkey-Boy, the Dogme film in which Herzog played a role. At the time, I took Herzog’s monologue to be satirical, expressing the complete opposite of what I estimated was the director’s own perspective, but maybe I was wrong. Herzog directing a movie about a corrupt cop busting caps and engaging in sleazy sex? Well, maybe those rumors about Ridley Scott directing a movie based on the board game Monopoly are true as well.

I’m a big fan of the original Bad Lieutenant and the movies of Herzog, with Aguirre the Wrath of God not far from the top of my list as one of the best movies ever made. So I’m definitely curious about what’s going on here. Is Herzog engaging in some form of Hollywood subversion, or is he just as guilty as the rest of us in enjoying sleazy women, car chases, gun fights, and the other titillations of genre cinema. Or perhaps his tastes have changed. Took me about 20 years before I started putting mushrooms on my plate and the films of Ken Russell in my VCR.