I walked out of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans not really knowing what I had just watched.  Was it a police procedural about the investigation into the murder of a low-level drug dealer and his family?  Was it a view into the twisted soul of a man hopelessly addicted to sex, drugs, and gambling?  Or was it just a goofy spoof of all dirty cop movies before it?  The answer is all of the above, which resulted in the cinematic equivalent of multiple personality disorder.

Loosely based on the 1992 Bad Lieutenant starring Harvey Keitel, Port of Call New Orleans stars Nicolas Cage as Lieutenant Terrence McDonagh.  He’s a mess.  After a dive into a post-Katrina flood to save a trapped inmate injured his back, he’s become addicted to pain-killers, cocaine, and just about any other kind of drug you can imagine.  He feeds his addiction by stealing seized drugs from the property room and shaking down frisky young couples exiting nightclubs for whatever they might have on them.  He also uses these young women to feed his sex addiction, which makes you wonder if that is how he met his high-class prostitute girlfriend.

In addition to the sex and drugs, McDonagh also has a gambling problem which has put him deep in debt.  That doesn’t make things any easier when his girl has problems with a client who’s got connections with the mob.

All this is happening while McDonagh is investigating the murder of a family of illegal immigrants who appear to have been selling drugs in someone else’s territory.  There’s one witness to the murders, a 15-year-old boy who is being protected by his grandmother.  After threatening the grandmother and her rich, elderly client, McDonagh falls under the watchful eye of Internal Affairs and really hits bottom.

I had no problems with the film as a police procedural, nor did I have any problems with its look into the depths of its title character.  The investigation goes in directions I did not expect and the script does a terrific job of connecting all the different plotlines at the film’s conclusion.  The journey of the Lieutenant through his various addictions also ends in a place I did not really expect, and this is where Port of Call New Orleans really differs from its 1992 predecessor.

Nicolas Cage is also very good in the role.  In a sense, the character of Terrence McDonagh is what would have resulted if Ben Sanderson from Leaving Las Vegas got a job as a police detective.  Cage’s pain- and addiction-riddled cop walks with a hunch, his tie always undone, and his increasingly nasal voice represents his journey deeper into the depths of addiction and despair.

Where the film lost me is the moments that felt more like a spoof than a down-and-dirty cop drama.  There are multiple laughs that I felt were unintentional, often coming from some odd-looking hand-held camera shots focusing on crocodiles, iguanas or other kind of animal.  These were the type of blurry, drunken shots that would have worked well if they were used to represent the detective’s drug-induced point-of-view, but they’re never used as such.  Cage is in the shots and aside from one reference that he’s the only one who could see the iguanas, there is no connection between him and them.

Many of the supporting actors look like they were cast in the film after taking one acting class entitled “How to Act Like a Cop 101.”  The performances are cliché-ridden and distracting.  The performances aren’t helped any by some really shoddy post-production work.  It’s never a good sign when you can easily tell which dialogue was recorded on the day of filming and which was looped in post-production.

There’s also a supporting character named Jeremiah Goodhusband.  Perhaps I’m getting much too nitpicky here, but for some reason I just couldn’t get beyond the odd name and it served as a distraction, especially considering that the camera seemed to focus intently on the door the name was printed on.

Due to the multiple personality disorder, every time Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans started to draw me into its drama, I found myself suddenly put off by something.  Perhaps that is what director Werner Herzog was going for, but it just didn’t work for me.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is rated R for “drug use and language throughout, some violence and sexuality.”  In terms of the drug use and sexuality, this is one of the more graphic films I’ve seen all year.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Jeff attended a promotional screening of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.