Bad Lieutenant - Port of Call: New Orleans

I don't know why Werner Herzog made '...Port Of Call...', and I don't care. The unofficial sequel to Abel Ferarra's 1992 cult masterpiece seems to have almost none of internal turmoil of its predecessor. There's no repentance, no struggles with the lost virtues of catholicism, no pontificating on the theme of revenge. Nope, Herzog just seems to focus on all the good stuff: wild gambling addiction, rampant drug use, twisting the law, prostitution, more drug use. It feels like an exploitation film, and it works. It's a LOT of fun.

Much of this is owed to the more than welcome return of Nicolas Cage. Those who don't hate him for his descent into Hollywood hell hate him for the energetic actor that he was: filled with an absurd amount of manic energy, going out on ridiculous limbs, and not afraid to look really bad in order to make the film around him look better (see 'Peggy Sue Got Married' and 'Wild At Heart'). Here, he has none of Harvey Keitel's lapsed catholic; he's just BAD. As a New Orleans police Lieutenant, he hunts down the local drug kingpin (a surprisingly good Xzibit) and dazzles his peers with the daily progress. Meanwhile, he's pimping out his prostitute girlfriend and drinking and snorting anything that comes into his path. His gambling addiction is about to get the better of him and his superiors are getting increasingly curious about how he comes about his results.

Cage doesn't play his descent as a man forced into a corner of redemption - he plays it as a batshit crazy addict who seems to have always thought the phrase went "Two wrongs make it right". He just keeps double crossing, stealing, and blackmailing until things start to turn back around for him. The results are something resembling the tail end of 'Blue Velvet', and it makes the journey that much funnier. But for me, this is all an excuse to watch Cage work his absurd magic. He paces around the film in an oversized, piece-of-shit suit; sweating, sweeping his thinning hair off of his forehead, and sporting a .44 down the front of his pants (no holster). There's little doubt he's playing it for comic affect, but he injects it with so much energy that there's no time to let the punchline sink in.

It's always good to see Herzog shooting on American soil. He never does it without the romantic eye of a foreigner in love with the terrain. He takes us to centuries-old bayou mansions, Katrina-ravaged slums, cookie-cutter chain hotels, and even occasionally shows us all this from the eyes of the local alligators! This may all be a dramatic tale of an addict's greed gone hilariously astray; but either way, it's about as much fun as you'll get from the movies these days.