Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans DVD 2009Remake is a dirty word. For me it conjures images of Adam Sandler jabbering his way into a Gary Cooper role (Mr. Deeds [2002] and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town [1936]), Gwyneth Paltrow as Grace Kelly (A Perfect Murder [1998] and Dial M for Murder [1954]), Richard Gere as Jean-Paul Belmondo (Breathless [1983] and [1960]), etc. The list of ill-conceived remakes is long indeed, and grows longer each weekend that movies like Clash of the Titans and The Crazies open to eight-digit returns. And yet a number of great films have been born of the twice-baked potato: The Maltese Falcon (1941 nee 1931), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956 nee 1934), Ben Hur (1959 nee 1925 nee 1907). This list on the whole is decidedly shorter and, I must admit, far more difficult to enumerate. Still, it proves that the right film reconsidered in the right light can buck the trend of incompetence that plagues the remake-happy film industry.

Werner Herzog has been here before. His 1979 remake of Nosferatu, while not superior to the original, was an artistic success. It grabbed hold of the classic Stoker tale, aped in occasional homage the framing of Murnau, but generally set off in its own creaking and shadowy direction, aided by the grainy authenticity of 1970s German cinema and the frightening performance of Herzog’s best fiend, Klaus Kinski. For Herzog to remake Murnau seems in retrospect perfectly logical. The breadth of Herzog’s work could fall under the umbrella of Man and His Impossible Endeavor. What greater challenge exists for a German filmmaker than to remake one of the most famous German films of all time?

Now we find Herzog, thirty years later and none the wiser (this is not a slight—the man popped out of the womb quoting Schopenhauer, I’m sure of it), remaking another classic, Bad Lieutenant (1992). The original film is a blistering Scorsese-esque portrayal of a drug-addled cop dangling far beyond the end of his rope. It took Harvey Keitel’s career up several notches and is without question his best performance. Period. Haven’t seen it? Well, neither has Werner Herzog. In fact, he’d never even heard of it before production began for his Lieutenant. Nor had he heard of Abel Ferrara, the original film’s director. Still, this naivety didn’t stop Ferrara from remarking of Herzog and company: “I wish those people die in Hell. I hope they’re all in the same streetcar, and it blows up.” He should have been more specific in directing his Bronxian rage. While the film’s script—not written by Herzog—does borrow strongly from the original, and both films share the same producer, Herzog himself is a sort of innocent. Upon learning of Ferrara’s existence and fury, not only did Herzog petition (unsuccessfully) to have the Bad Lieutenant moniker dropped from his film, but he also invited Ferrara out for a bottle of whiskey. Abel has yet to accept.

So is Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans a remake, or isn’t it? Yes and no. Re-envisioning is a more suitable term. Certain parties (see above) wanted to do a remake, only when the project passed through Werner’s own brand of madness what came out the other side was something absurdly original, essentially Herzogian.

The differences between the two films are myriad, the most glaring of these being the tone. Port of Call abandons the boilerplate tragedy of its predecessor for an asylum farce, and is in the director’s eyes a black comedy. Where Harvey Keitel’s lieutenant is a man you want to see redeem himself, Nicolas Cage’s lieutenant is a man you would happily nudge over the edge of a cliff, if only to see how high he would bounce. And bounce he does. The manic energy spiking in Cage’s performance cannot be overstated. Arms flail, pills fly, accents change with the irregularity of Vampire’s Kiss (1988), acts of violence erupt with the intensity of Wild at Heart (1990). This is vintage, erratic Cage, certainly not his strongest work but easily his most entertaining role of the last decade. Yet chew as he may on various bits of scenery, paraphernalia and fellow cast members, his performance is never able to hijack Herzog’s vision. Under a saner man such a performance might trash a film, but with Herzog, who has made a career of working with the clinically unbalanced (Kinski, Bruno S., Brad Dourif), Cage’s hysteria takes the film to new heights. To borrow from Val Kilmer, who appears in full form as the titular lieutenant’s partner, it’s all a bit like watching a tempest in a teacup.

Things work best for Port of Call when Herzog follows his leading man down, when he shakes off the conventions of a cop procedural and does something disastrous. He goes so far as to pull the film apart at the seams when Cage’s character becomes unglued, at one point using a POV shot from an alligator that may or may not exist, at another point interrupting a key stakeout scene with a full minute of close-ups of imaginary iguanas to the tune of Johnny Adams’ “Release Me.” It’s disgusting. It’s brilliant. In such moments I see a distillation of Herzog’s oeuvre. But more than this, I find both that which makes true art a thing to admire and that which is most admirable in life itself: commitment. It is with the absolute commitment of a captain who goes down with his ship that Herzog punctuates his narrative so completely. It’s the same commitment that drives Aguirre into the Amazon, Stroszek to America, and Timothy Treadwell to Alaska. It is the solitary penguin in Encounters at the End of the World (2007) that, rather than return to its flock, chooses to flee from the ocean into a thousand miles of barren ice and almost certain death. It is Nic Cage pulling a gun on a pair of geriatrics. Whether right or wrong, remake or not, it is resolute.

And who can argue with that? – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Crime/Drama

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 4/6/10

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,