Review of Bad Lieutenant (1992) by Devon — 20 Feb 2009

The Bad Lieutenant starts the movie by dropping his kids off at school, and before they are even out of sight, he's snorting cocaine in the car, and that might be the nicest thing he does all movie.

He's so out-of-control it's amazing he continues to function at all. He catches some underage girls driving with a broken tailpipe and beats off on the side of their car as he makes them "perform" for him (in order to get out of calling their dad).

At one point, a fully nude Keitel is dancing around with a woman and a man, and it's suggested that in his drug fueled haze he's been sleeping with the both of them. Meanwhile, a nun has been raped in a church (the attackers use a crucifix to break her hymen).

Yeah... this is some movie. Everyone is under the spell of the Mets/Dodgers N.L. championship series (he shoots his car radio over a bad play, only because he's losing so much gambling). When he runs his gambling debt to $120,000, he decides to start shooting heroin.

He confronts the nun (who knows who her attackers were) and can't get his head around the fact that she forgives her rapists. What is it about the nun that affects him so deeply he must further medicate himself to black her from his mind? What is it about his own past that he's trying to forget? Why does he continue to punish himself? He digs himself deeper, corrupting all good.

It's an absolute corruption of good, and yet the nun is implacable. At the moment he realizes this, he is confronted with a vision of Christ, it's an association of her all forgiving nature with that of Jesus'.

In the end, he does something that saves some evil people at the expense of some good people whose money he takes. This is supposed to be an act of redemption, but I found it to be just one more in a series of gross acts by a gross individual.

I'm not sure what this movie is trying to say, it seems to just revel in how disgusting it's lead character is. It's not fun to watch, and i'm not sure who this is supposed to appeal to.

If the role depends on your sympathy, it doesn't do a very good job of winning it. Still, Harvey Keitel is horrifyingly great as the Bad Lieutenant, it's almost impossible not to watch just to see what he'll do next.

I can't imagine another actor doing this role service.