Released: 1992
Starring: Harvey Keitel, Victor Argo, Paul Calderón, Leonard Thomas, Robin Burrows, Frankie Thorn, Victoria Bastel, Paul Hipp
Director: Abel Ferrara
Distributed by: Aries Films
Rating: NC-17 (UK – 18)
“Gambler. Thief. Junkie. Killer. Cop.”
Sometime in the early 90’s, filmmakers heavily influenced by the stark nihilistic films of the 70’s emerged and went on to create some classics we know today as Seven, Clerks and Trainspotting. Abel Ferrara was one of the auteurs of the 90’s grit and grime style, offering a stark inward look at life.
Bad Lieutenant was one of the films that were swept under the rug at the time of its release due to its mediocre reception. Harvey Keitel takes the lead as the titular lieutenant, a sleazy unlikeable junkie abusing his power for his own selfish needs.
The film opens as the lieutenant takes his kids to school, screaming obscenities as they get into the car. During this time, we see the lieutenant’s tone and emotion change multiple times, going from anger to frustration to an enraged repentance. Keitel and Ferrara paint an image of a self-loathing, dark individual lacking any redeemable characteristics. The lieutenant’s personality is on a roller coaster for the entirety of the film. Wading through the filth and deceit of New York City, the lieutenant draws lines in the sand between the city’s vile underbelly and everyday society that he walks freely across.
There is a certain dissection of humanity in Bad Lieutenant that isn’t explored as thoroughly in many other films–though some films, such as The Departed and Scarface, do come to mind. These undertones float to the surface at key points during the aforementioned films, but in Bad Lieutenant the dissection is done front and center while the plot trugs along slowly behind before getting any momentum.
Ferrara wants to take his time letting the audience get to know the levels of depravity the lieutenant descends to on his day to day. The second scene is a prime example of this and includes some fine cinematography and writing. The lieutenant turns up to a very violent crime scene. Two girls in a car have been gunned down. Blood splatters the windshield and covers the bodies, light shining crimson throughout the car and on the pavement. The lieutenant and other detectives take a glimpse into the car and make a quick and vague assessment of what happened. They then stroll into a huddle to talk about the Mets in the coming baseball league, as if the officers are by the station water cooler. Police ineptitude and corruption is pasted across every frame as if Ferrara has some opinion about the subject. Thankfully it’s subtle enough that it doesn’t distract the audience and the main stage is always with Keitel’s lieutenant.
A lot of scenes start with the lieutenant smoking heroin with some dealer of his, such as Zoe (Zöe Lund). She will shoot him up and send him on his way, mumbling and sweating. At these points in the story, the plot moves forward suddenly as if the drugs and loathing are punctuations to the narrative beats. Its arrangement follows the day to day of a vile man with every vice possible, within which is a crescendo to the events as he gets closer and closer to the edge. Each step is a potential tipping point which truly feels like it could be the lieutenant’s last, as the consequences and stakes grow higher with every scene.
The plot begins to really develop at the halfway point of the film. A young nun is raped in a Catholic church by two assailants. At first, the lieutenant is entirely uninterested, but he eventually has a heroin-induced religious crisis. He sees Jesus standing before him and takes it as a sign to find the two suspects. The religious symbols are all over this film from beginning to end. At one point a naked stoned lieutenant stands with two prostitutes crying in a crucifixion pose.
At many points in the film, the portrayal of heroin and drug abuse is through a religious perspective, while the religious scenes are contrastly cast in a profane light. This highlights the commonality of religious symbolism in the city and is shown fully as the lieutenant mutters, cries, and repents while wasted and two prostitutes caress him as if he is Christ himself.
Ferrara has a unique, old-school New York Bronx view on life coming from his Irish and Italian Catholic heritage and being a prior heroin user. Zöe Lund is a heroin advocate who, unsurprisingly, died of a heroin-related illness. It is easy to see some aspects of both Lund and Ferrara’s lives influencing Bad Lieutenant.
The themes and subject matter are pitch dark and there is no real letting up. Every slip or compromise in moral standing quickly turns into a landslide, and for this, the screen time is given to Keitel in his very daring and bold role. Keitel speaks, acts, and carries himself exactly like that guy you see in a bar late at night. The guy with a suspect sniffles, a betting docket in one hand and a gin tumbler in the other. Keitel embodies the character in an excellent and slightly unsettling way.
The film’s most infamous scene has the lieutenant stopping a car with two girls in it late at night, he approaches and begins a seedy decline into a level of debauchery you won’t see outside of a snuff film. The scene is genuinely hard to watch. You have the main character of the film sexually abusing two women in a car by blackmailing them into simulating oral sex, while the lieutenant frustratedly writhes and grunts. The scene continues for far longer than is comfortable, turning it into one very disturbing moment in movie history. This is made worse with the knowledge that one of the actresses in the car was Harvey Keitel’s childminder.
The above scene, or even the whole film, could have been very different. Ferrara initially wanted Christopher Walken for the role as the film was originally a comedy. The scene would have ended with Walken, hooking arms with the two girls, singing and dancing as he waltzes into the misty New York night.
Abel Ferrara and Harvey Keitel made a bleak and provocative movie about a man seeking redemption. Saying Bad Lieutenant is a poor film would be undermining the point of its very existence. True, it won’t be for everyone especially those of short tolerance for political incorrect dialogue or stark and vile scenes. But within this film is an ethos of sorts, a painting of a junkie, a seedy corrupt cop trying to find some redemption. It would be easy to paint him as a bad man who finds a better way through his redemption, but instead here is a complicated man who never changes, doesn’t ever learn anything, and is defiant to the very end.
Abel Ferrara and Harvey Keitel didn’t make a masterpiece, but they did make a story of a very very Bad Lieutenant.
Rating:
Thomas C:
A lonely, miserable film that drags you into the day in the life of a bad lieutenant is one of Harvey Keitel’s best performances of his career. Definitely worth a watch…. Just maybe not on a sunny day.
Leave a Reply