After a brief detour to recognize the best films of 2011, we now return to our scene-for-scene analysis of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. For optimal results, read parts I, II, III, and IV on this blog.
It appears my labor of love has spilled into 2012. When we last left our anti-hero, things weren’t exactly breaking his way. He had lost the sole witness in a homicide investigation and become the subject of a police investigation himself (he did, after all, cut an elderly woman’s oxygen supply and call her a “selfish cunt”).
The man, Nicolas Cage, also has a gambling problem, which the film reminds us in the first scene of this installment.
The sequence begins, like so many shots in Bad Lieutenant, with an elegant , unflashy long take. Werner Herzog opens the scene with Cage barreling down a hallway at a police office in New Orleans.
Herzog’s camera follows Cage into his office. Cage, armed with his newfound accent, spots a prostitute and complains about the number of them he saw on his way to work. “Clean it up,” he tells one of his minions. (more…)
