Have you seen the original “Bad Lieutenant”?
Nope I have not, but I will check it out and see it the comparison is strong there. Have you seen it?
Well, there are similarities. Namely, the general premise where a decorated officer becomes, despite his own shortcomings, successful in his career and virtually a hero.
But the remaining differences are vast. In Twain’s short story Luck, the protagonist (Scorsby) is incompetent and simply unreliable – it is this particular character flaw that he is spared the consequences of, from which he goes on to live a successful and long life.
In Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant, the protagonist (McDonagh) is really the exact opposite of Scorsby. McDonagh is very efficient, self-assured, and his character flaw is merely his ambition and escapism (well, not “merely”). McDonagh, just like Scorsby, emerges virtually unscathed (if one can call chronic back pain “unscathed”, but remember it’s this unendurable pain that leads him down his drug-addled path, so this pain, itself a result of him doing good, is a cause for his evil-doing – if that isn’t an Herzog-esque twist I don’t know what is), and his “secret” is never revealed to anyone except the audience (and of course the people he’s fucked over).
I had a lot of problems with Herzog’s film though. While I thought the general premise of the story was pretty solid, there seemed to be a confusion of how Herzog wanted to portray this character. I mean, we’re shown a scene where McDonagh “confiscates” (read: steals for his own personal use) some dope off a couple teens (after receiving sexual favours from the young woman), and then we have a scene where he rambles on and on about a silver spoon he found as a kid playing pirates (and guess what, he finds it at the end and it “wasn’t actually silver” – nice, Herzog, real nice). There’s just so many unattached threads to the story that it’s infuriating.
There’s also the problem of McDonagh’s sidekick (Val Kilmer). The character doesn’t play very predominantly in the film, but where he does appear is interesting (though, yet again, frustrating as well). He appears at the very beginning (the scene with the man trapped in the flooded cell) and seems to fuel McDonagh’s “darker side” by almost convincing him to leave the man (McDonagh makes the “good” decision and saves the man). And then, at the end of the film where McDonagh busts a criminal (who he’s been befriending, and profiting from, for half the film) and he and Kilmer are holding guns on the criminal. Kilmer attempts to convince McDonagh to shoot the man and take the drugs, but once again, McDonagh makes the “good” decision" and arrests the man. So, my question is, what is the backstory of the nefarious sidekick?
One similarity one can draw from this to Twain’s Luck story, is the Reverend. In Twain’s story, the Reverend is just as incompetent and clueless as Scorsby, but Scorsby becomes successful and the Reverend does not. Perhaps Kilmer’s character is a version of the Reverend (if we suppose the link between these two narratives is true).
But overall, it just seemed to me that Herzog was working with the unpredictable laws of fate (if one can indeed call them ‘laws’) and instead of representing a static character who’s fate is determined by some cliched supposition of narrative (or inflated sense of justice), he makes a film about a character who we can’t make any quick judgments about (as we’re often used to in film) and ends it the way he “shouldn’t”, with total ambiguity and morally unjustified success.
But back to the thread: I don’t think the comparison was “reaching too far” at all, in fact, it’s an angle I hadn’t seen before you brought it up. We need more threads like this.
With all of the problems that you had with the film… I think there are too many for Herzog to lean on any type of “the movie had fallacies because of the immense drug use” fallback.
Haha…
But, I do disagree with your statement that there were too many “sides” (tell me if I am putting words in your mouth) to McDonagh’s character. I think when he is talking about the silver spoon that he found as a kid is actually taking him away from his drug addiction and placing him back into a comfortable zone of his life with the fact of his reminiscing. Even though he rambles on and his eyes still look like Cage is playing him as the addicted McDonagh, I think his childhood memories are rubbing off on the addicted side.
You are sure right about the sidekick though… Damn, he was undeveloped.
Another question though… (BIG SPOILER TO ME)
As I watched the trailer, I was doubting the effect of the real world hallucinations with the iguanas… But when the dancer comes out after the dealers shoot the goons that are after McDonagh. It was so risky and I thought it was executed a lot better than I thought it was going to be. How did you like those hallucinations?
Well it’s not that there were too many sides to his character necessarily, but that there was no transition from one ‘side’ to the other. I mean, humans aren’t robots, we don’t immediately switch from almost raping someone to divulging our childhood. But even that I could probably overlook, if it wasn’t for the way Cage plays the scene. It’s like he’s describing a fairy tale to a child when he’s describing it to a prostitute and a confused audience. I get the reason why Herzog put it in there, but it should’ve been chopped off in the editing room I guess is what I’m saying. It’s just such an obvious narrative trick to get the audience liking Cage again, but it isn’t needed (and Herzog just spent all this time trying to make things ambiguous).
Yeah, I thought the hallucinations were done well. They weren’t too over-the-top (mainly because, for those who have had hallucinations in real life, they tend to be very integrated in the real world, but not subtle, merely unbelievable) and Herzog didn’t make them too subtle or too out-of-place.
It’s a pretty good though, surprising.
I think the Val Kilmer character primarily serves as a devil on mcDonagh’s shoulder. McDonagh does bad things, but he’s always there encouraging worse, with the interrogations and with Chavez in the beginning & Big Fate in the end.
Taylor Kyles
Shoot me if this is reaching way too far, but I read a short story by Mark Twain a couple of weeks ago. The name of the story is “Luck.”
Today, I saw “The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” and I thought back to this short story that Twain wrote and realized that there are a lot of similarities between the two works. Does anybody find this connection valid?
Link to the story:
http://www.mtwain.com/Luck/0.html