Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009): The Best Cage Film in Nearly a Decade [Joey’s Review]

by Joey Lewandowski · Published December 16, 2015 · Updated November 19, 2017

After we got to ADAPTATION. and MATCHSTICK MEN, I realized that there weren’t too many top-tier Cage movies left. There’d be some, sure, but we had reached a point where most of Cage’s best films were behind him. That’s fine! No one can make solely great movies (except maybe John Cazale), so it’d be insane to think there wouldn’t be some clunkers in the back half of #CageClub. But while most of Cage’s best films are in the past, there are some great ones left. And I had forgotten just how completely amazing BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS was.

It’s amazing.

Once again (like KNOWING), our podcast episode for this film is very long and in-depth. There are so many layers and themes to un-pack with this film, and I feel that we did a really good job of doing so there. (Make sure to listen when it plops tomorrow!)

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is great for a few reasons. As always, Cage fully commits to his role. The difference here is that he’s coupled with director Werner Herzog, who lets him fully embrace his next-level intensity. Like the other top-tier Cage films — like RAISING ARIZONA and WILD AT HEART — Bad Lieutenant puts an intense/crazy/elevated Cage in a world full of like-minded characters. No one in this film is of their right mind; everyone Cage encounters is either an addict, a criminal, or a crooked cop. The world is hyper-real, and Cage is able to be hyper-real in it as well.

The film also succeeds because it’s not beholden to the original (at least, I don’t think it is… I still haven’t seen it. whoops!). Herzog said he’d never seen the original when he made this movie, and the only reason it’s called “Bad Lieutenant” is because the studio thought adding those words would make the film more financially successful. (To make the story of its name even crazier, the screenplay isn’t even set in New Orleans, but rather New York. Could it have originally been called Port of Call? Probably not, but maybe?)

Also, this is the #CageClub debut of GATORCAM and IGUANACAM. So there’s that.

This is a film you need to see. It’s one of Cage’s best, and his best since (at least) Adaptation. It’s one of my five or ten favorite Cage films, and the podcast we recorded is one of our five best. Watch this film, listen to our podcast, and enjoy.