The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans

One of Nic Cage's finest movies in many a year, and role that was made for him. Violent, darkly funny, and thoroughly entertaining.

It's probably not fair to review an 11 year old movie. But this one is standard cop vs drug dealers. Nicolas Cage, who I love, plays a corrupt cop, but nothing you wouldn't see on CSI. The violence was neither very violent or interesting. Filming in New Orleans was a great idea but underutilized. Same with Eva Mendes as the junkie girlfriend. There's one interesting scene involving lizards [! ] that seems to have no point except, hey, lizards! It's sort of a crazy movie. But not crazy enough.

Except for an over the top Nicolas Cage, The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans doesn't have anything worth watching. The murder mystery falls flat, the movie gets boring pretty quickly and the movie is quite predictable. If you want to see a crazy Nicolas Cage performance, then, by all means watch it. If not, you're better off watching something else.

Nicolas Cage is by far one of my favorite actors, because even in a bad movie like this one, he gives everything he's got. The man is pure intensity and believable in any role. That's why I get so frustrated when he wastes his time on a bad movie like this one. I never saw the first Bad Lieutenant film, but this one was presented as a dark drama, centered around the murder of an immigrant family, but that really wasn't the focus of this film. Port of Call New Orleans focuses on a cop who was injured in the line of duty. As a result of severe pain, he turns to drugs and to using any means necessary to obtain those drugs. If I were the writer of a film like this, I would have made it a comedy and the cop would be completely outrageous and over the top. There were a lot of scenes that could have been made really enjoyable with a little bit of comedy, but they didn't do that. This is a slow moving film, about a mess of a man doing up things. There really is no point to the whole thing and it is more than somewhat hard to follow. A good measure of a movie is how long does the film actually feel. Bad Lieutenant was 2 hours, but easily felt like 8. The beginning is kind of interesting, and while I was beyond bored, I had to stick it out to see what happened, I'm sorry I did. Cage is fantastic as usual and the film makers had all the tools needed to make this an amazing film. Instead, they were lazy and dropped this giant turd on us, that is nothing more than a confusing waste of time.

I couldn't figure out WTF this movie was about. I like Nick Cage and all that but really, what the hell was this? You're either gonna love it or want you're 2 hours back. PS. I will never in my life go to New Orleans.