Review by Dragan Antulov
2 stars out of 4
There are various forms of misery, depravity and
self-destructive behaviour, but being the protagonist of
Abel Ferrara's film is category for itself. One of the
examples is unnamed New York police detective (played by
Harvey Keitel), main character in Abel Ferrara's 1992 drama
BAD LIEUTENANT. He nominally works as a homicide detective,
but his job is nothing more than convenient method to steal
drugs from the crime scene, shake down money from the
suspects or abuse authority in order to satisfy his animal
instincts. Apart from drinking, whoring and abusing every
illegal substance in sight, Lieutenant has developed
particularly nasty habit of making huge baseball bets, and
the recent losing streak has created enormous gambling bet
that makes his bookies quite nervous. In the meantime,
Lieutenant investigates the case of brutal rape of a nun
(played by Frankie Thorn). The fact that the nun forgave her
assailants baffles the Lieutenant and he starts to think
about changing his life.
Abel Ferrara, one of the most interesting directors in
modern American cinemas, finally established that reputation
with this film. He was served very well by the bigotry of
MPAA, which had issued NC-17 rating and thus ensured extra
publicity for BAD LIEUTENANT. He was even better served by
the enormous talent of Harvey Keitel who gave one of his
strongest performances ever in usually thankless roles of
one of the sorriest excuses for the human being. The script
by Ferrara and Zoe Lund (who appears in the small role of
Lieutenant's drug-using mistress) took almost pornographic
approach towards lows which human being can sink in urban
jungles of modern America. However, this depressive but
powerful vision (from which we can't take eyes off, same as
with traffic accidents) is compromised in the second part of
the film, where Ferrara offers some hope of redemption for
our protagonist. In that segment religious imagery and
subtext is overused (and that would, in most likelihood,
alienate non-Catholic audience from this film) and the film
looks cliched, despite taking somewhat unusual approach
towards protagonist's relation to religion (which was
probably the real reason behind NC-17 rating). However,
although flawed and overrated, BAD LIEUTENANT is
nevertheless interesting viewing experience for those who
can handle unpleasant and disturbing truths about humanity
being displayed on the silver screen.
Copyright © 2001 Dragan Antulov
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