An Eccentric Thriller

2010_4_15 “An Eccentric Thriller”
The “Bad Lieutenant” recently in the theaters was not a remake or sequel to the film of the same name made in 1982 by Abel Ferrara. The earlier one starred Harvey Keitel as this drug-addicted degenerate detective on a nasty downhill slide. Ferrara’s film had a reputation as a gritty, truthful, and controversial film, with a great performance by Keitel. The new “Bad Lieutenant” is another kettle of fish entirely. To say the least. But there are some carryovers and some similarities of character. Edward Pressman produced both films, with the Polsky brothers being co-producers; and they were the ones who convinced Pressman to get involved with the second project.
The detective, Terrence McDonagh (Nicolas Cage) is cut from the same pattern as Keitel’s cop, someone who plays it fast and loose with the rules; and ‘Dirty Harry’ is a partial prototype as well. McDonagh’s weapon of choice, like Harry Callahan’s, was a .44 Magnum and he wore it shove into his pants, with the long barrel nuzzling his genitals. At one point in the narrative he was pressured by two officers of Internal Affairs to give up the gun; he cringed but finally hands it over. He was clearly the wild man in the New Orleans Police Department. He’d bend the rules and steal some dope (cocaine, heroin, oxycotin) to subdue the pain he had to live with every day and give some to his prostitute girl friend (Eva Mendes) who was as hooked as he was. But besides being erratic, he was tough, persistent, heroic, and, as his supervisor said, he had good instincts as a cop. He is always very intelligent, always several steps ahead of everyone else, both his supervisors and the drug dealers. This was how he differed from Keitel’s cop who was clearly going to come to a bad end from the get-go. The New York detective was lost and much darker. He was killed by gambles as he sat in his car stoned out of his mind, whereas McDonagh outsmarts the Gamblers and his temporary drug dealer associates. In sum, this new ‘bad lieutenant’ was a survivor and more clever than the opposition. He had a knack for coming out smelly like a rose. He would win through to sin another day.
The movie belongs to the two co-conspirators: Herzog and Cage. Cage’s performance was an amazing tour de force, as he carved out a cop who could be called a virtuous madman. He did a better job than in anything he has done in recent years. The film opens with him saving the life of a jailed prisoner during Katrina, which was how he hurt his back—a permanent injury. That got him into Vicodin and from there he went to other drugs to ease his pain. This disability forced him to walk at a slant, with one shoulder higher than the other, giving him the awkward gait of a man not comfortable with his body and how he must move it. At Times he looked like Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre dame. At other times his eyes darted from side to side, as if we are witnessing the tectonic plates of his psyche shifting or colliding. His emotions are like a brush fire igniting his tense and twitching physicality. Despite how he jerks, humps, and twitters from one scene to the next, when all was said and done, he’d come with the bad guy saying, “I love it! I love it!” As for Herzog, he was no doubt out to prove to the Hollywood powers that be he could make a profitable thriller, with a few inventive peculiarities to spice up the narrative, which I’ll discuss in a minute. I am sure he was behind Cage’s performance, encouraging him to trust his instincts as an actor and to go over the top when that seemed called for with this character.
I am not so interested in discussing the plot as I am to discuss certain metaphors and moments in the film that make it an unconventional and eccentric thriller. For example:
1.) In the opening scene in the flooded prison a snake slithered through the oily water. The snake struck an ominous note right off the bat. Ironically, the prisoner McDonagh saved turned up again by accident in the very last section of the film. The guy had gone straight, he was clear of drugs, and had a steady job. The final image was the two men sitting on the floor in an Aquarium, with various fish swimming around in their tank behind them. They got there right after the cop had said out loud, “Do you think fish dream?” It was a scene in vivid contrast to how they had met the year before in the foul dark prison water. The two scenes were like book ends supporting all the incidents between the two time frames. They gave the film an unexpected symmetry.
2.) In another scene a gator was dead on a road; it had been hit by a car that flipped over. An argument between McDonagh and a traffic cop goes badly at the scene. It ended with another gator, shot from a very low angle, peeking over the bank of a river alongside the road. Perhaps he was mate of the dead gator. Like the snake, he was an ominous presence and generalized lurking threat.
3.) More animals showed up in another scene; this time evidence of the detective’s drug highs. He visited a stakeout with four other cops. He perceived two iguanas sitting on a table. When he mentioned them to the others they said, what the hell are you talking about; there aren’t any iguanas on that table? We don’t know if it was a version of the DTs or Herzog amusing himself.
4.) At the shoot-out with the three gamblers, just after they were shot dead, McDonagh shouted “Shoot that one again; his soul is still dancing!” Herzog illustrated this curious apparition by having one of the gamblers break dancing on the floor for a few seconds; then he was shot again and the dancing stopped.
5.) When McDonagh had taken his girl friend to his father’s place to hide her, he showed her an out building where he used to play as a child. He informed her that his mother told him that a pirate’s treasure was hidden by the tree right out from the doorway. He had taken his father’s metal detector and found a bight shiny spoon, a treasure that he in turn had hidden somewhere in the out building and he had never found it to this day. But later on he did find it and brought it in to it show his woman. He laments the fact it is no longer a bright shiny treasure, for now it was rusty and tarnished, just like he was in middle age. Experience changed our ideals and treasures.
Terrence McDonagh can be placed alongside other emotionally wounded Detectives, like Kurt Wallander and Jesse Stone, who carry on despite their handicaps, which in some strange way helps them solve crimes. And like them he could end up in more than one movie. He is a natural for a new series.