Review of Bad Lieutenant (1992) by Chris Z — 25 Mar 2010

Whoa. Abel Ferrara didn't pull any punches with this one. He goes really hard into Catholicism (rape of a Catholic nun) with Harvey Keitel as the investigating heroin and cocaine-addicted alcoholic totally out of control gambling-junkie NYPD detective, and he doesn't do it gently.

It's got the forceful style of King of New York, but it's also a little scattered. Keitel gives an exceptional performance, but Ferrara takes it a little over-the-top in showing us just how over the line he is.

Probably half the movie is spent watching Keitel do drugs, drink, take advantage of girls, sex with hookers/druggies, etc, while we don't really get any sense of how he became unraveled, what haunts him this much.

And yet, despite the relentless onslaught of Keitel's character as completely and totally over every line imaginable, he is somehow a redeemable man even as he has long since passed the point of no-return.

But Keitel still carries the film, just grabs you with his monologues and his breakdowns particularly when he finally loses it in the church and basically starts crying out under the weight of everything he's tried to carry that he laments he is too weak for.

And then when the nun, who knows who her rapists are, decides instead to forgive them and not tell anyone their names when Keitel proposes essentially to murder them (they being young and unlikely to face "real" punishment), Keitel freaks out.

Will he chase them down and murder them? Will he arrest them and grab the reward to pay off his gambling debt and save himself and his family? Or will he do something else entirely under the weight of a lifetime when he could not forgive himself? A rough, but impressive film.