Bad Lieutenant

Harvey Keitel gives a terrific performance as a cop who's also a drug user and gambling addict. However, everything else in the movie is terrible. The movie is about a police lieutenant who is investigating the rape of a nun and goes through some kind of spiritual awakening at the end. However instead of showing him doing any actual police work, the movie focuses on scenes where the lead uses drugs and gets deeper in debt to a bookie. These scenes seem to be just thrown into the movie and Keitel is the only one you see in more than one of them. The idea that a cop could keep his job with this type of behavior and the ending are totally unbelievable.

Indeed, the plot had potential for a theme of redemption, and one moving in this direction because of an example of forgiveness. One who looks for this will be greatly disappointed. The dialogue and acting are dreadful, the plot filled with such extreme and unreal stereotypes that those who watch films on religious themes, and who think that Richard Burton in Exorcist II was the worst of the lot, may wish to consider turning over that trophy to this cast.

Keitel certainly captures the image of a man who is an absolute mess - one unforgettable scene, for example, is when his curses and rage precede his shooting a car radio through his ire over a huge gambling loss. One wonders if he belongs to a police department where even a semblance of sanity is a requirement.

The main character, I am sure, was intended to capture passion and conflict. The trouble is that his passion is expressed in nothing beyond constant strings of obscenities. The anguished facial expression which I imagine was intended is a gargoyle grimace, unvarying, which puts one in mind of a character with a perpetual stomach virus (though I suppose heavy drug usage, such as this 'bad cop' displays, can cause such an effect.

The nun who should provide the inspiration seems catatonic rather than ethereal - a vowed Stepford wife, or perhaps, with today's technology, a robot. Her words on forgiveness, obviously intended as a powerful contrast with the lieutenant's despair and hatred, are so 'canned' as to make one think one is digesting rations left over from the second world war. Her indifference towards seeing a rapist prosecuted could leave one puzzled as to whether vowed life leaves any room for protecting others from the horrid fate.

As the Amazon reviewer quoted, this is a "Catholic guilt" film - stereotypical, but without substance. The church scenes, probably filmed to give an impression of call and response in some vague fashion, give more of a sense of one sinking into paranoid schizophrenia.

This must rank with one of the absolute worst films of this or any decade.

I believe this is [the] bottom of the barrel performance of Keitel's life. The story was stilted, disjointed and incoherent. Maybe it was meant to be that way, but it was a dumb movie, altogether. I won't waste my time detailing the premise of the story, but there are parts that will make you laugh out loud - the car scene with the two young girls that Keitel "gets his rocks off" (literally), that's absolutely hilarious. I really don't feel that this movie was meant to be serious, because it was too far out there. It's possible that the drug-induced scenes were real, because Harvey Keitel had to have been on drugs to perform the way he did in this film. The Director must've been on drugs when he made this movie....honestly.

I am reviewing this because I am a guy that likes Bad Cop/Good Cop movies. With this movie, "The Bad Lieutenant" it's from the same director that did, "King of New York" Which was one of my favorite movies of all time.

Bad Lieutenant has a lot of things going for it. It was a very well pace movie, but also savage and sometimes strange. Yes there are some parts in this movie that is kind of a hit and miss, but most its a very good movie that I am glad was made.

If you like these type of movies, the Bad Lieutenant is a good choice for any die hard fan of these movies.

P.S. There is a remake coming in 2009 with Nicolas Cage. Which the director has already said it was not going to be a remake. We'll just have to see and wait.

Whisper his name. Harvey Keitel. Shout his name. Harvey Keitel. No matter. He did not win any awards for this role, this damnation, this damned man, a police detective in "Bad Lieutenant."

There's a song, "Bad to the Bone," which might sum up the detective, or it might not be strong enough because Harvey Keitel's character is bad to the bone and then some. He lives as a family man, but on the edge, clearly not part of this family, a stuffed man, stuffed with aloneness, stuffed with horrors of his own making. Director Abel Ferrara's filming technique extends this isolation by making the movie look like a docudrama. Filmed on location. No takes. Shoot as is. Keep the cameras rolling.

He starts the day clean as he drops his two sons off at school. During the course of the day he investigates two vicious murders, a store theft he turns to his advantage by keeping the stolen money, does drugs with a stoned out, emaciated redhead, and engages in a menage-a-trois with two women. During this scene he evens out the equal rights debate for male actors to engage in full frontal nudity. Yes, he does. Then he gets his life-defining case--the vicious rape of a young nun by two local petty drug dealers.

Harvey Keitel has spent the day engaged in personal encounters with, well, let's name it, sins of the flesh, of the soul. He sees the nun several times over the next few days, trying to understand what happened to her. When she tells him with her own mouth that she forgives the two men and will not identify them or name them, but only forgives them, he has a major crisis of conscience.

One reviewer calls this film a major religious movie, and, indeed, it becomes so. These are scenes to cherish for their truthful beauty, for their naked exposure of a soul in dire peril. Harvey Keitel produces a keening for his soul the like which will make your hair stand on end. The following scenes need to be seen and not read.

What transpires resonants with the viewer as the viewer comes to understand the moment's eternal meaning. No more will I say.

Note: This movie is rated NC-17 and is not for the squeamish.