The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (2009)

Movies have a way of sneaking up and surprising you from time to time, you just never know when they are going to do it or when. Werner Herzog, the helmer of this remake of the 1992 film Martin Scorsese named as one of the ten best of the that decade, is definitely a reputable source for something unexpected.

Bad Lieutenant takes the bad cop formula and then ramps it up to the extreme. Nicolas Cage, who delivers my favorite leading actor performance this year, plays Terence McDonaugh, a good cop who suffers a back injury and is promoted to lieutenant (though based on the opening I wouldn't say he is all good). The movie chronicles his slow descent into madness, as he picks up a coke addiction, gambles endlessly, and cuts off one of his girlfriend's (Eva Mendes) most powerful clients (she is a prostitute, and he is ok with that).

There is also a plot tying everything together about the murder of a whole family, and McDonaugh's search for the killer. But this movie isn't about plot as it is about McDonaugh and his depravity. Near the opening, he lurks outside a club and pulls over an unsuspecting couple; he frisks them for drugs, then takes what he finds and rapes the guy's girlfriend right in front of him (though she goes willingly).

Such a character sounds unlikable and he really is an unlikeable person. But Cage is so electrifying in his performance of this corrupted man that you actually root for him as the bad shit piles on higher and higher. Herzog is known for his character studies (most notably the middling Strozek), and this definitely fits the bill. This performance could have easily been a caricature, but Cage instead fully embodies and believes in this role, and so do we.

The supporting actors are also really good, most notably Eva Mendes as the prostitute girlfriend. She is equal parts sexy and broken on the inside, and never once seems to be overselling her character. The same goes for rapper and Pimp My Ride host Xzibit as a drug kingpin, who has one of the most crazed car rides in recent memory.

The film will be noted for other unique elements that come into play; Herzog holds the camera on the gaze of reptiles, a crocodile and some infamous iguanas. Both shots inspire laughs, for different reasons, but both keep you magnetized to this lizards. And the iguanas will become a part of the film snob vernacular, as I fear far to few people will get to see this movie due to its limited release. But those iguanas, and a dancing soul, add to McDonaugh's crazed reality and hallucinations, whether that is due the medication, cocaine, or the mixture is irrelevant.

If you have the opportunity to see this movie, do it. I command you. It reaches a level of depravity I hadn't thought possible in a film portraying a "bad" cop; Dirty Harry would blush in this guy's presence. Let it be known to the world that Nicolas Cage's performance in this film is going to be the single unsung masterstroke of the year.