The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009, USA)

It's hard to know what to make of Werner Herzog's The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Is it a send-up of cop films? (Apparently not, as Herzog claims he's never seen one. Though that would actually explain a lot.) Is it a farce? A flat-out comedy? Is Herzog just giving the finger to Abel Ferrara? To paraphrase Nic Cage - what the FUCK is going on here?

So loosely based on the idea of Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant (possibly best known as the 1992/3 movie not starring Holly Hunter where audiences were treated to Harvey Keitel's schlong), that it doesn't even seem to exist in quite the same universe (or any universe I'm personally familiar with) as the original film, Herzog's Lieutenant follows bad cop Nicholas Cage through New Orleans as he investigates a multiple homicide, threatens his hooker girlfriend's clients, holds up kids in alleys for drugs, and smokes a lot of crack. There are multiple scenes from a reptile's point of view. An amusing bit featuring an electric shaver, a very large gun, and two 80-year-old women. And Val Kilmer.

From what I can understand of Herzog's interviews about the film - which is not a lot - he intended Lieutenant as a comedy. And it is generally very, very funny, though it's often hard to tell exactly how much of the comedy is actually intentional, not just because Lieutenant is totally dry, but also incredibly uneven. It was shot on a relative shoestring on a tight schedule, which probably accounts for many of the abrupt tonal shifts, along with the fact that Herzog, to my knowledge, has never made a film like this one. And when you look at the scope man's career, that's really saying something. Nice going, Werner. Try a little more lizard-cam next time.