Wednesday, October 14, 2009

BAD Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans

Werner Herzog

There is something about re-doing a successful film that allows the director to be more relaxed with his product. Knowing that the fundamentals of the film are firm, the director can play with the product, have fun rather than agonizing about details that might not matter in the fullness of the film experience.

Bad Lieutenant is just such a film. Werner Herzog seems to have seen the original film and thought, I can do this better. And he has

He is having fun with his actors, (Nicolas Cage in particular) with the plot, with the material and this emotional mind set results in a gem of a film

Can you be a man without a big black gun affixed to your body? Do fish dream, do sharks, do you? And who is to blame for the financial political malaise that plaque us today?

Laugh with this film; relax, enjoy and have fun as Bad Lieutenant Port of Call plays with you, with me, with the serious issues of our time (including Katrina post flood). Herzog creates for the viewer a moment of enjoyment while gruesome death, murder, destruction and utter mayhem reign.

The Bad Lieutenant Port of Call portrays neither the Bad nor the Good. What more do we need to know about survival in this downward quality of life that has no end in sight.


Linda Zises
WBAI Women's Collective

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