It should be clear that this is familiar ground for all involved. Abel Ferrara is a filmmaker who prides himself in his gritty street tragedies. Harvey Keitel has found a performance niche in spiraling disaster. Both at their peak in the early 90s, a period that saw King of New York for Ferrara and Keitel's star turns in Thelma and Louise, Reservoir Dogs, and The Piano. The combination of these powers, though, results in a bit of an overload for both scientist and subject, in good ways and bad.
Career Making Performance for Keitel
The title is the story, the story is the character. The Lieutenant, who remains nameless, lives in freefall. He is constantly high, scoring anything he can from crime scene evidence or dealers he pretends to chase into apartment buildings. He snorts cocaine the moment the kids jump out of the car for school in the morning. He uses his house only to crash between emotionally charged benders. He forces teenagers to mock sex acts for pleasure. Nothing is off limits as his disgusting self abuse reaches further into the depth of a pure black soul yearning to be made white.
Keitel sells every second of the madness, restrained at first, allowing his demons to overtake him through the final half of the film. As the cycle of destruction neared its completion, though, the issues that only itched through the beginning of the film became more problematic.
Bad Lieutenant is Too Loose
The story ends up sacrificing a lot to preserve the spiral effect of the character. The narrative is very loose, as scenes feel more like a list of all the bad things the man has done, strung together only by the radio and television play of the Mets-Dodgers National League Championship. His bets with bookies grow and the Mets make a stunning comeback -- the miraculous rise acting as an inverse parallel to the lieutenant's own downfall. But this film never really shows its human side and its redemptive climax feels more like a drunken mistake.
"You raped a holy thing. You destroyed that young girl. And she forgives you. Ya hear that? She forgives you." - The Lieutenant (Harvey Keitel)
The only person more challenged in the making of this film than Keitel was Ferrara. During excruciating scenes such as the heroin shoot-up, the patience the director has for the performance is wonderfully untypical, though it lasts for mere moments. At times, the film feels like it was edited by someone in the midst of a binge between uppers and downers, drifting between hallucinatory montage and achingly slow scenes that prove exhausting by film's end.
In a puff of rage, the film and its lead character exit as they came in. The impact left on the audience is undeniable, but equally undeniable are the strained lengths to which they went just to make this impact. Most of the film feels overzealous or too restrained with unsubtle or ridiculous religious imagery. In the end, nothing is really learned and the movie's bitter conclusion is simply appreciated for its manic depressive nature. 2.5 out of 4.
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