Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is a loaded movie. With mad director Werner Herzog and King of Camp Nicolas Cage involved, it’s impossible to dive into this film without certain expectations. For all that, Bad Lieutenant is a surprisingly stately, straightforward film, all things considered. Herzog’s grand experiment this time is not only creating a police procedural, but making a straight-to-video sequel/remake that is NOT a straight-to-video flick sequel/remake, a cinematic conundrum to aggravate and torment critics. (Herzog has stated his film bore no relation to Abel Ferrara’s 1992 classic with Harvey Keitel, but who are we fucking kidding?)

This Bad Lieutenant follows the trials and tribulations of newly minted Lieutenant Terrance McDonagh (an unhinged Cage, so it’s par for the course), a coked-up, relentlessly corrupt cop who robs people of their drugs, helps himself to the goodies in the police evidence room, and has a prostitute for a girlfriend. (the lovely and affectionate Eve Mendes, who revels in Terrance’s drugged up existence). As in all his films, Cage is either about to explode, exploding, or drifting in a dazed zombie-esque shuffle. Herzog uses the Three Faces of Cage to full effect; The Bad Lieutenant careens about with Cage’s manic-depressive moods to the point that the hallucinations (one involving iguanas, another a breakdancing soul) are merely afterthoughts. He also smokes his crack in a “lucky crack pipe.” Lieutenant McDonagh a bona fide piece of work.

Terrance is investigating a massacre of a Senegalese family of illegal immigrants. His investigation leads him to track down a drug dealer named Big Fate (a cool and professional Xzibit), who has two cohorts named “Midget” and “G”. (Terrance never fails to guffaw and smirk at the unoriginality of the latter street name). Terrance’s investigative methods can be rather brutal; he pulls out the tubes from an old woman’s ventilator so her caretaker will reveal the whereabouts of a witness. After he gets the information he needs, he tells the two women, “You drop dead you selfish cunt. You ever think about your kids? Your grandkids? Suck it up their inheritance through that oxygen tube? And Bennie’s fucking intensive care. I hate you, I hate you both. Right now, I should’ve fucking kill you. You’re the fucking reason this country going down to drain.”

Ironically, Terrance’s rough treatment of the women gets him demoted to clerking the evidence room, which is the last place you’d want to place this drug-addled cop. Pissed off that the police department had the gall to demote him, Terrance decides to team up with Big Faith so he raise money to pay off his mounting gambling debts. Terrance teaming up with the man responsible for the massacre of the Senegalese family completes his arc of the Anti-hero. Terrance and Big Faith nonchalantly discuss waterside real estate as Big Faith’s cohorts dump a body into the bay.

The film is filled with those incomparable Herzogian touches, such as wonderful scene involving a crocodile’s eye view of a car accident. And comparisons between Cage and Klaus Kinski are inevitable. Herzog has perhaps found the man that can match Kinski’s frantic madness, and Cage does well with the bizarre lines and the mounting absurdity of the film. Herzog also makes oblique reference to the violent, chaotic nature of American culture, draping the background of one scene with enormous wide-screens of American sports.

Cage carries the whole film, naturally, and he finally becomes the “Chemical Superfreak” he once claimed to be. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is a fine film, and fairly accessible as far as Herzog films go. Care for a bump?