BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS - Review

Fancy a night in with the family to settle back and enjoy some home made chips and watch a wholesome, feel good movie? Well, if you answered “yes” to this, then be sure not to pick up Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, then.
Near constant profanity and graphic drug use are the orders of the day, so be warned and heed the MA classification, as it’s there for a reason.
With out any build up, we jump straight into what are two stories; the bad lieutenant of the New Orleans PD, Terence McDonagh’s drug addiction and it’s resultant unpleasantness intertwined with that of a major murder that McDonagh is investigating.
McDonagh is played with alarming believability by Nicolas Cage, and it must be said, he commands the screen with his manic performance and although we find it nigh on impossible to find anything to like about his character, we can’t take our eyes off him.
If you do manage to, you will see Eva Mendes as McDonagh's prostitute girlfriend, who has previously played love interest to Cage in Ghostrider, but her effort here is far less convincing and appears to be just a minor variation on anything she’s played before.
Val Kilmer makes an appearance as McDonagh's partner, Stevie, seemingly having eaten a number of pastries since he did The Saint remake, but he doesn’t get quite enough meat to really make an impression next to Cage.
Eccentric director Herzog uses plenty of close in camerawork to capture the seedy, post Hurricane Katrina New Orleans underworld and to good effect. Even the genre’s well worn image of shadow cast from venetian blinds in the detectives’ office doesn’t feel clichéd here. Just dirty. Terence’s lizard hallucinations are a surprise, and actually quite amusing as a brief respite from the grim subject of murder and his painful medication and drug addictions.
And for those of us who have been delayed waiting for a prescription to be filled, we may find amusement in Cage’s scene in the pharmacy where he runs out of patience, but please don’t try it at home…
The subject material of police corruption and substance abuse are not new, but this film raises the old question: Are these guys born bad, or is it the job and a failure ridden system that in fact breeds the corruption itself?
So with that in mind, sit back with this movie and wonder how well you think you really know that cop next door and then when it’s finished, go and get yourself a lemon liver detox.