Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
I’m no Abel Ferrara historian, but based on my hazy memories of King of New York I think by the nineties he’d settled down a bit from his video nasties phase that brought him to public attention with Driller Killer and Ms. 45, the latter being the sort of film that credits him with an acting performance of the character “1st rapist”, as though it’s an orchestra or something. At any rate, Bad Lieutenant is very much the sort of film that would have caused Mary Whitehouse to get all hot and bothered about.
Harvey Keitel takes the lead as our unnamed Noo Yawk copper, who in short order after we’re introduced to him will have stolen evidence from a crime scene, a bag o’drugs, in order to sell to his pet drug dealer, smoked a bit of the ol’ crack, cheated on his wife and got himself deeper in debt with his bookie on a series of failed baseball bets. And somehow he’ll get much worse over the course of the piece.
In as much as there is any kind of narrative driver to the film, it’s to track down the rapists of Frankie Thorn’s young nun, an act which we are not spared, although any such sleuthing will have to wait until The Lieutenant has sexually assaulted two young women after a traffic stop.
This ridiculous spiral will continue until the stress of impending retribution from the bookies and the metric butt-ton of drugs and booze causes him to have a meltdown in a church, mewling like Beaker off the Muppets and hallucinating a vision of Christ, which Mark Kermode says makes this a rightly hailed powerful tale of redemptive Catholicism, but which I’ll simply call stupid.
And so it goes. I first watched this back in my teenage years, and I didn’t think all that much of it then and I don’t think time has shifted my opinion of it. It’s, obviously, a filthy old film, but where as something like Taxi Driver at least presented a character you’d want to pick apart and see what makes Travis Bickle tick, here The Lieutenant is so cartoonishly, pulpishly dreadful that there’s little interest to be had with him. We are left only hoping that we will see him being fed into a woodchipper, and that this doesn’t happen is surely cinema’s biggest missed opportunity.
We can’t fault Keitel’s performance, I suppose, as he’s certainly committed deeply to the role. Indeed, we see far more of him than any sane person would want to, and if you so desire I suppose there’s some axes that you could judge this as not being a bad film.
My overriding issue with this, however, is that I do not discern any useful point to this sleazefest. Kietel is a Bad Lieutenant, that much is driven home, but I cannot accept a drug induced freakout, then aiding felons to elude justice, then getting shot, as being any sort of redemptive character arc, particularly for a character who deserves much worse. I suppose I’m just too Old Testament.
This film is like wallowing in mud for ninety minutes, and I suppose there’s a use for something like this in cinema, even if I’m damned if I can see one. If cinema is about feeling, then there’s perhaps a time for something that makes you feel gross and dissatisfied, like you’re covered in a thin film of grease.
In short, I’m glad that I do not have to think of this film ever again.