Bad lieutenant (2009)

Bad lieutenant is Werner Herzog at his most unhinged and zany. Call it post-Katrina New Orleans, a hellish city of gambling, shady police officers and coke-dealers. Nicolas Cage is up-ranked to lieutenant after having saved a man from death. Cage is involved in solving a murder mystery. A family has been slaugthered. Cage is baaaad lieutenent, vigilante-style. His girlfriend is a prostitute and when he is not taking his dose of Vicodin (a bad back) he is snorting interesting substances.

At first, I actually expected this to be some kind of mystery movie. You know the drill: a puzzle / bits and pieces of information / resolution. Well - Herzog's mind is not bent on that. Herzog is more interested in freaked-out paranoia and eerie digressions about alky daddy and a dog that needs a temporary home. This is a film about bad cop demons. You know, this is the kind of movie in which we witness an iguana blinking its eye against the backdrop of Engelbert Humperdink's rendition of Please, release me. Like that. Then I haven't said anything about Cage's acting style; it is, as they used to say, far out. In the very best sense of the term.

And I love it. Of course I do. I love it for being blizzed-out seedy. I love it for being goofy James Ellroy. This is bad-ass PULP as it should be. This film will warm my heart like, forever. Just thinking about it brightens my mood.