The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans

When I sit down to watch a movie, I prefer to not have an opinion about it before I start. I find that I tend to enjoy movies more when I know nothing about them going in. And of course, I like being able to claim that I am objective in my reviews. But when you see Nick Cage in a movie you can’t help but brace yourself for the worst. With a filmography that includes Knowing, Bangkok Dangerous, Next, The Wicker Man, and that mess of a Ghost Rider movie, all in the past 5 years, you have to be wary of any movie starring Cage. It’s not that he’s a bad actor, its more that he over acts everything. The best description of Nicolas Cage I’ve heard is, he has moved beyond over acting and is now MEGA ACTING.

‘The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans’ is a stage where Cage’s MEGA ACTING actually works. He gets to play a strung out, coke addicted cop and is lots of fun to watch. He plays New Orleans cop Terence McDonagh. During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, McDonagh rescues an inmate, in the process injuring his back and getting a promotion to lieutenant. To deal with his back pain he starts taking vicodin eventually becoming addicted to them and cocaine. Dealing with that, and a gambling addiction, and his alcoholic parents, and a murder case, and his prostitute girlfriend, just culminates in to a big ball of stress for this bad cop. And when I say bad cop, he is into all the classics. Stealing from the evidence room, lifting drugs from crime scenes, arresting people then just taking their drugs and letting them go, threatening to arrest athletes if they don’t throw games he’s bet on the list goes on and on. Cage’s over the top style works wonders, especially in scenes where he is high as a kite.

This movie is a mess, there are almost too many things going on to keep track of. There are a many side characters, side plots, awkward pauses, all revolving around McDonagh. It’s a perfect combination of chaos to portray McDonagh’s hectic life. I’m not complaining so much about the frantic story-telling, until it gets to wrapping it all up. The half dozen story lines all wrap up in the last two scenes. The majority of those plots ending abruptly an inexplicably. This is either the dumbest ending to a movie I have seen, or the smartest. And after everything is wrapped up, you get a nice book end to answer one lingering question and raise one more. The question I was asking myself when it was all over was this movie something that the audience viewed through the fourth wall, or viewed as the coked up McDonagh saw things… Deep right? Well maybe not, but it explains a lot of the weird editing in the movie and what the deal was with Val Kilmer's character.

Despite all the crazy that this movie brought with it, I would defiantly recommend it. You get some laughs, in between moments that make you shake you head. I thoroughly enjoyed Cage’s performance, it was a movie that I can't imagine any other actor starting in. Now all that’s left to do is wait and see if MEGA ACTING can make “Drive Angry” worth watching.