Search found 1 match: Abel Ferrara

Earlier this year I got a job as a movie critic for a local magazine/site where I get to review new films, as well as any other "old" films I like. Here's the first one of the older film reviews I did:


Werner Herzog offered up his own version of a bad lieutenant in his 2009 semi-remake, with Nicholas Cage brilliantly cast in the title role. This character was a coke-snorting, whore-humping, iguana-hallucinating cop, though compared to the 1992 original by Abel Ferrara with Harvey Keitel in the uniformed position, he’s as civilised, straight-minded, and well-mannered as a cop can get.

Abel Ferrara is perhaps the ultimate cult filmmaker. He heavily dislikes studio interference, he’s not concerned about making money or winning awards, and he makes the films exactly he wants to make, with little regard for what audiences or critics may think. Because of this, his films have been greatly attacked by some, yet greatly admired and beloved by even more. Bad Lieutenant is one such film, a piece of work with such lurid content and a hardly likeable main character – some may call this film transcendent and cathartic, some may call a disgusting piece of trash. Ferrara seems to be content with dividing his audiences.

The centrepiece of this film and the main ingredient that makes it work is Harvey Keitel as the nameless lieutenant. He starts off in the film as a man on the very edge of total self-annihilation, and goes further down from there. Keitel, like Ferrara, is an actor who’s not in it to please everyone. He spends most of the film either smoking crack or scrunching up his face in a pitiful cry, and for my money it’s one of the best male performances of any film from the ‘90s. The actor was going through some difficult personal problems during production, mainly related to his divorce, and his monumental frustrations and existential pains show in this film. There are many long and static shots of him, presenting himself in a very naked performance (emotionally and literally), which is often so dauntingly painful to watch, the only natural reaction is laughter.

This film is a journey of the lieutenant’s downward spiral into the absolute pits of degradation, all the while spiritually tested by the case of a raped nun he has been assigned on. The denouement of this film that finally cuts off the depravities of this character is as purposefully problematic as it is enigmatic – there are sure to be many different opinions on his decision, a sacrifice that questions the notions of forgiveness, as well as invoke many curiosities of this character’s motivations. It may not have been what was right, but it fits like a glove in this tortured character arc and perfectly interweaves the paper-weight story and powerful themes together by the time of the film’s stomach-dropping finale.

As with any great character study, the content of this film is as depraved as the character it is studying, and it is all the more successful for it. Ferrara is a filmmaker who pushes the boundaries of what content goes up on screen and in what dramatic context it’s in, but he’s not in it for the shock value -- he is telling a painful story in a painful manner, and he had an excellently vulnerable actor to give the performance of his miserable life.

http://www.colosoul.com.au/thearts/bad-lieutenant/