trailer for Herzog's Bad Lieutenant

Andvil · Post by **Andvil** » Wed May 27, 2009 8:27 pm

None · Post by **None** » Wed May 27, 2009 8:40 pm

Still highly unnecessary, but looks entertaining.

Trademark · Post by **Trademark** » Wed May 27, 2009 8:53 pm

looks like fear and loathing in lolsvegas "what iguana" mixed with kindergarten cop "lose the kid, lose the case" mixed with wicker man "can I get my prescription please!"

looks horrible...looks like they tried to make it funny....I mean harmonica music on the trailer? I hope it's a lot darker than this garbage. Bad Lieutenant was brutal, this shit is gay.

Apathwhy · Post by **Apathwhy** » Thu May 28, 2009 4:15 am

I would think it looks horrible if the director wasn't Herzog, but that's the case so I'm going to declare it movie of the decade.

battlecatmeowstab212 · Thu May 28, 2009 4:41 am

Looks amazing. Between this and Bronson, 2009 is a magical year for film.

How was 12 Rounds?

Andvil · Post by **Andvil** » Thu May 28, 2009 4:42 am

Apathwhy wrote:I would think it looks horrible if the director wasn't Herzog, but that's the case so I'm going to declare it movie of the decade.

spoken like a true film nerd

but seriously this is going to be incredible

I think I'm one of the few people here that actually really likes Nick Cage
I am and have been extremely hyped for this

ackbar · Post by **ackbar** » Thu May 28, 2009 5:07 am

Andvil wrote:I think I'm one of the few people here that actually really likes Nick Cage

in what way / how?

Andvil · Post by **Andvil** » Thu May 28, 2009 7:55 am

because he is one of my favorite movie characters of all-time, H.I. McDunnough
also cause he can be great in things and he knows when he's just getting a check
and he doesnt take himself too seriously
and Adaptation
and The Wicker Man

Mercuthio · Post by **Mercuthio** » Thu May 28, 2009 8:02 am

...?
that looks pretty fuckin horrible...

"shoot 'im again, his soul is still dancin'..."

ackbar · Post by **ackbar** » Thu May 28, 2009 8:05 am

Andvil wrote:he can be great in things and he knows when he's just getting a check

i don't necessarily disagree with that.. but it's been over 10 years of nearly 100% shit
dude has enough money

Andvil · Post by **Andvil** » Thu May 28, 2009 8:57 am

true
dude likes money, I aint hatin
get up playa stay up

drizzle · Post by **drizzle** » Thu May 28, 2009 10:59 am

i can't say i'm blown away by the trailer exactly but i got faith in the H-dawg, even if his documentaries have been better than his features for a while now. there's a decent chance that even if it's not good it'll be so bad as to slide nicely into the 'so bad it's good' territory

i like cage as well, even at his most retarded he's amazingly entertaining to me. and i think he might still have one legitimately good role in him

drizzle · Post by **drizzle** » Thu May 28, 2009 12:06 pm

a good interview with herzog here, he says he's never even seen the original http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jan ... -interview

also

DIS EST HOW LAWNG MY CAWK ISSS

Masked Terror #1 · Post by **Masked Terror #1** » Thu May 28, 2009 12:10 pm

How/why did this get remade?

drizzle · Post by **drizzle** » Thu May 28, 2009 12:15 pm

he saying it's not really a remake

YO DAWG I HERD YU LIKE NIKOLAS CAJE SO I PUT HIM IN DIST MOOVIY SO YOUU CAN LEAF LAST VEAGAS WHILE FACCING OFF WIT DAST DARKNESS INSIDE YUR PATHETICK MORTAL SOUL

ALASKA · Post by **ALASKA** » Thu May 28, 2009 12:29 pm

Ill never forgive him for how poorly he treated vincent chase on fire jumpers.

Rabbi Jihadovich · Post by **Rabbi Jihadovich** » Thu May 28, 2009 2:35 pm

^^ LOL

Comedy Quaddafi · Post by **Comedy Quaddafi** » Thu May 28, 2009 2:58 pm

Thinking about this makes me feel warm and tingly. My two immediate picks for favorite movie would be this and Robocop. Now both are being redone by great directors. I'm not mad at all if its marginally as good as the originals.

blastmaster · Post by **blastmaster** » Thu May 28, 2009 3:55 pm

Looks pretty sweet. They probably could have used a different title though...

christian from austin · Thu May 28, 2009 4:36 pm

thread is funny

The Red Scare · Post by **The Red Scare** » Thu May 28, 2009 7:52 pm

Only Herzog could possibly make a decent film starring Nicholas Cage, Val Kilmer, and Xzibit. I still have faith in this.

drizzle · Post by **drizzle** » Fri Sep 04, 2009 11:37 am

first review i've seen. mccarthy is often an armond white-esque hater, but this seems about on the money with what the trailer suggests

From the moment it was announced, there was something a tad loony about the idea of remaking -- or revisiting or reinventing or whatever they want to call it -- Abel Ferrara's 1992 "Bad Lieutenant," with Werner Herzog, no less, directing. Well, lo and behold, there's also something rather loony about the finished film itself. But there's also a sort of deadpan zaniness, stemming from a steadfast conviction in its own absurdity, that gives "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" a strange distinction all its own. Not at all an art film, the picture lacks sufficient action to sate the appetites of sensation seekers, but star Nicolas Cage's name means enough to offer some short-run B.O. traction and good home-viewing market returns.

Even though the original "Bad Lieutenant" was strictly cult fare, the title does carry a certain cultural resonance. The second American film to sport the NC-17 rating, Ferrara's film was ballsy, raw and drenched in Catholic guilt and renunciation motifs, as well as loads of explicit drug taking by a New York cop spiraling toward a personal hell.

Herzog isn't into much of the above; nor is he the sort of visual stylist keen to put his own imprint on the history of film noir or the detective genre. To the contrary, New Orleans is a bright, if blighted, city, and Herzog approaches it, as well as the depredations of the title character, with a straight face and unblinking lens, the better to catch a glimpse of the links connecting Katrina, the corruption of authority as seen through the outrageous behavior of the lieutenant, and the money, which lands mostly in the wrong places.

If one watched this movie without knowing the identity of the director, it would admittedly be difficult to give it much credit, since it is so indifferently made, erratically acted and dramatically diffuse. Not in 20 years or more has Herzog exercised the sort of formal control over his dramatic features that he has over his documentaries, and for a considerable stretch, it remains unclear how one is to assess the helmer's handling of vet TV crime writer William Finkelstein's pulpy scenario. The film is offbeat, silly, disarming and loopy all at the same time, and viewers will decide to ride with that or just give up on it, according to mood and disposition.

Already on Vicodin for back pain, Cage's Lt. Terence McDonaugh pursues the case of five Senegalese illegals rubbed out in an obvious drug-world hit. The search for their supplier takes place across some of the scuzziest stretches of the Big Easy, and all signs point to an elusive operator named Big Fate (Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner).

But all along, the mystery takes a backseat to the lieutenant's increasingly erratic behavior. Hunched over due to his back problems and customarily dressed in a slightly oversized suit with a large revolver stuck straight down the front of his pants, Terence resembles nobody so much as Nosferatu, the protagonist of one of Herzog's key films 30 years ago. At one moment, Terence is shaking down upscale clubgoers for their drugs and screwing their dates in front of them, then rushing to his unlikely prostie g.f., Frankie (Eva Mendes), for a coke antidote to the heroin he's accidentally snorted. He also, as in the original film, runs up a frightening debt with reckless sports betting.

Weird little interludes see Terence taking up again with a hot-to-trot former ladyfriend (a very good Fairuza Balk), assuming responsibility for a large dog and dumping him on Frankie, and participating in some bizarre shenanigans involving alligators and iguanas photographed in extreme, handheld closeup by Herzog himself.

Whatever else one might think of Ferrara's "Bad Lieutenant," it was a story about wrenching guilt driven by personal demons, and Harvey Keitel fearlessly threw himself into the title role. The new film, which was backed by the same producer, Edward R. Pressman, betrays nothing close to such levels of deep commitment by either Herzog or Cage, who mostly bide their time with riffs on the narrative until close to the end. Once Terence hits bottom -- he's totally drugged out, put on suspension at work, owes a ton to his bookie, threatened by thugs and faced with losing his girlfriend -- the film gets giddy and ends up being, of all things, a fairy tale with a wrap-up no one would expect.

If Cage was looking for a vehicle in which his hyper-emoting would be dramatically justifiable, he found one here. Sometimes he's so over the top it's funny, which one can hope was intentional. Unfortunately, there's no rapport between him and Mendes, and their physical encounters seem so tentative as to resemble rehearsals. Val Kilmer is completely wasted as a fellow cop -- it's too bad Herzog didn't bother exploring the actor's capacity for comedy -- but Joiner exhales charisma as the rising drug lord Terence might consider joining rather than beating.

An unglamorized, sun-baked New Orleans is vividly presented for what it is, warts and all, but still exudes its particular flavor. Production values are average.

drizzle · Post by **drizzle** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 2:09 pm

First of all:
An excerpt of Herzog's statement from the "Bad Lieutenant" press notes:
It does not bespeak great wisdom to call the film The Bad Lieutenant, and I only agreed to make the film after William (Billy) Finkelstein, the screenwriter, who had seen a film of the same name from the early nineties, had given me a solemn oath that this was not a remake at all. But the film industry has its own rationale, which in this case was the speculation of some sort of franchise. I have no problem with this. Nevertheless, the pedantic branch of academia, the so called "film-studies," in its attempt to do damage to cinema, will be ecstatic to find a small reference to that earlier film here and there, though it will fail to do the same damage that academia -- in the name of literary theory ג has done to poetry, which it has pushed to the brink of extinction. Cinema, so far, is more robust. I call upon the theoreticians of cinema to go after this one. Go for it, losers.

And teh article that accompanies it -

Werner Herzog Explains Himself:

When the news came out that Werner Herzog planned on remaking Abel Ferrara's 1992 cop drama "Bad Lieutenant," the film community was collectively befuddled. Why would a veteran of the German New Wave bother with a gritty New York City noir that has limited appeal in the first place?

As it turns out, Herzog never saw the original movie, nor did he care about it. Producer Edward Pressman originally got the idea for a remake, but Herzog's new movie -- which stars Nicolas Cage as drug-addled investigator and premiered at TIFF earlier this week -- shares almost nothing other than the title with its predecessor.

Still, Herzog felt the need to speak out against skeptics of the project in the press notes for his production, titled "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans." In the notes (excerpted below), Herzog decries "the pedantic branch of academia" that "will be ecstatic to find a small reference to that earlier film here and there."

On Tuesday, I sat down with Herzog and asked him why he felt compelled to issue an official statement on the matter. "In the speculation preceding the release of the film, before anyone had seen it, there were already complicated comparisons between Ferrara and me," he said in his distinctive baritone. "I've never seen any of his films and I don't know who he is. That kind of academic thinking is foreign to me. These parallels do not exist."

I pointed out to him that it sounded like he was complaining about a media problem rather than an academic one. "So be it," he said. "It's not my problem; it's their problem. It got out of control very easily, but it will die away as the film hits the screen."

When Ferrara was fuming to the press about his disdain for Herzog's production, he wondered aloud if Herzog would mind him remaking the German filmmaker's classic "Aguirre: Wrath of God." So I asked Herzog about that, too. "Let him do it," he said. "He would never manage to do it. No one would ever manage to do that one."

An undeniably unique storyteller, Herzog also has an infectiously self-centered manner of speaking about his own work. With his four-decade career of unforgettably strange and philosophical narratives, he has earned the arrogance, but it's still a wonder to behold: He claimed to have written all the memorably strange moments in "Port of Call," including a scene in which Cage's character has a vision of iguanas on a coffee table and another in which a dead man's soul rises up to break dance (oddly, the dancer is played by the credited screenwriter, William Finkelstein).

He also boasted about managing to collaborate with infamously difficult producer Avi Lerner. "He never read the screenplay," Herzog said. "Everybody warned me: 'Oh my god, you can't work with a man like him. I was the only one to ever invite him to the set." Herzog said he finished the production two days ahead of schedule and $2.6 million under budget. "Now, he wants to marry me," Herzog said of Lerner.

The director stays busy. He recently began offering weekend seminars in filmmaking, and just finished an additional feature also premiering at TIFF this week: "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done," another police movie, stars Michael Shannon and was produced by David Lynch.

I asked Herzog if he takes on all these projects as a means of making a living, or exclusively to satisfy his creative needs. "I have always managed to make a living somehow," he said. "My standard of living is way under what you would probably expect from a director, but it always happens that once I earn money from a film, I immediately invest in the next film."

But was it daunting for Herzog, who often makes daring adventure documentaries, to make a movie with a big Hollywood star? "No," he said. "A force like Nicolas Cage and a force like me should be left in peace."

Roy Johnson · Post by **Roy Johnson** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 4:23 pm

Comedy Quaddafi wrote:My two immediate picks for favorite movie would be this and Robocop.

For real? Harvey Keitel is pretty much my favorite actor, but I always thought that the original "Bad Lieutenant" was a complete piece of shit.

cynosure · Post by **cynosure** » Thu Sep 17, 2009 8:17 am

saw the film at TIFF a few days ago. Its really unfair to compare it to "Bad Lieutenant", as its not even related to it at all other than in title. Herzog explained after the film that it was named as such because the producer owned the title, and wanted to tack in on there.

DULLAH · Post by **DULLAH** » Thu Sep 17, 2009 7:59 pm

Anyone placing any faith in this film being good in any way is insane.
Billy Finkelstein either wants more money, or he wants everyone who never saw the Keitel/Ferrara/Argo masterwork to see it.
Or both.

AWAE · Post by **AWAE** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 2:36 pm

ebert gave it 4 stars.

drizzle · Post by **drizzle** » Mon Nov 23, 2009 12:24 pm

saw it. it's good as hell. shouldn't really be considered a remake at all, there's some plot similarity but it's about where it ends. the plot isn't even really all that important here. pretty much none of the driving themes of the original are retained. the whole point of the movie is just letting cage run wild with the character, using Kinki's Aguirre role for reference (the crazy eyes and the hunch and the turn into the camera, etc).

it's like this - for years everybody is shitting on cage for overacting and chewing scenery. meanwhile herzog is chillin in the cut, thinking 'this guy isn't doing it wrong, he's doing it in the wrong movie. so maybe if i just put him in the right environment, it will work.' and it does.

None · Post by **None** » Tue Dec 01, 2009 4:15 am

drizzle wrote:saw it. it's good as hell. shouldn't really be considered a remake at all, there's some plot similarity but it's about where it ends. the plot isn't even really all that important here. pretty much none of the driving themes of the original are retained. the whole point of the movie is just letting cage run wild with the character, using Kinki's Aguirre role for reference (the crazy eyes and the hunch and the turn into the camera, etc).

it's like this - for years everybody is shitting on cage for overacting and chewing scenery. meanwhile herzog is chillin in the cut, thinking 'this guy isn't doing it wrong, he's doing it in the wrong movie. so maybe if i just put him in the right environment, it will work.' and it does.

This. Also, the dvdscr is out.

blastmaster · Post by **blastmaster** » Wed Dec 02, 2009 1:03 am

Well, I loved this fucking movie. Nothing to do with BL. Fucking awesomeness everywhere. Xzibit was kinda great in it too.