BAD LIEUTENANT (Maple, 1992) D: Abel Ferrara, w/ Harvey Keitel, Frankie Thorn. Rating: NNNNN DVD package: NNNN Rating: NNNNN
Bad Lieutenant is brilliant in every way, but not a pleasant ride, since the unnamed NYPD officer is thoroughly vile: rapist, thief, blackout alcoholic, heroin and coke addict and compulsive gambler, more interested in the monstrous sums he’s losing on the World Series than the rape of a nun he’s investigating.
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Harvey Keitel gives a career-defining performance that ranges from dead-eyed cynicism through alcoholic rage to the abject anguish of a soul in torment. Every moment carries such a ring of truth, you can almost smell him.
In a commentary that too often dissolves into muttered asides to his cameraman, and a much better making-of doc, director Abel Ferrara describes a shooting style that involved following Keitel through his improvisations and maintaining a strict visual neutrality. That absence of emotional cuing is a big part of what makes Bad Lieutenant so harrowing – and so great.
EXTRAS Commentary, retrospective making-of doc. Widescreen. English audio. English, Spanish subtitles
