Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Directed by Werner Herzog
- drama
- crime
The story
Terrence McDonagh is a New Orleans Police sergeant, who receives a medal and a promotion to lieutenant for heroism during Hurricane Katrina. Due to his heroic act, McDonagh injures his back and becomes addicted to prescription pain medication. He then finds himself involved with a drug dealer who is suspected of murdering a family of African immigrants.
What it’s like
Hot, saturated colour bleeds through every frame: bayou greens, bruised purples and the sickly fluorescent glare of motel rooms and nightclubs, with iguanas, alligators and a crowd of hallucinated animals drifting through the wide, often tilted compositions. Herzog's camera lingers in long, unhurried takes that let the humidity sit on the screen, and the score runs from bluesy guitar and jazz-club warmth to eerie, floating unease. Its mood is sweaty, absurd and darkly comic, a kind of sun-scorched dread that keeps tipping into laughter. Violence arrives in sudden, ugly bursts (a shooting, beatings, a stretch of brutal police behaviour) and drug use is shown plainly, so this is not gentle viewing. It suits a late, restless night rather than anything soothing. The story follows a damaged, self-destructive cop slowly unravelling, and the film is for people who enjoy odd, untidy character studies and a swaggering, hallucinatory take on the crime genre.
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