Bad Lieutenant
Encyclopedia
Bad Lieutenant is a 1992 crime
-drama film
directed by Abel Ferrara
and starring Harvey Keitel
as the eponymous "bad lieutenant
". The screenplay was written by actress-model Zoë Lund
. She also played a small role in the film. Lund had been discovered by Ferrara and had starred in his earlier film, Ms. 45
.
The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard
section at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival
.
) drops his two sons off at Catholic school. After they leave the car, and before he drives to work, the Lieutenant takes a few small bumps of cocaine. His first case is a double murder. He wanders away from the scene to get some coffee, and across the street, he watches a petty thief rifling through the trunks of parked cars, which the Lieutenant ignores. In the next scene, the detective approaches a group of drug dealers, who run off as he approaches. The Lieutenant follows one dealer into an apartment building and up the stairs. The dealer waits for him in the hallway, and the Lieutenant gives him a bag of drugs from a crime scene. The Lieutenant quickly smokes some crack, and then sets aside a portion of the drugs for himself. The thief promises to give him the money he makes from selling the drugs in a few days. At an apartment, the Lieutenant gets drunk and engages in a threesome with two women, showing his naked muscled body.
Meanwhile, a nun (Frankie Thorn
) is raped in a church by two young hoodlums. In the hospital, the Lieutenant spies on her naked body as she is examined by the doctors, who explain that the two boys also raped her with objects like a crucifix. The Lieutenant listens to her confession, where she admits to having no feelings of animosity towards her attackers. She sees the attack as an opportunity for God's grace to be bestowed on them.
The next morning, the Lieutenant is passed out on the couch in his home as his two young daughters watch TV. His family comes to the table for breakfast, and he stirs. He immediately flips the TV to see the results of a National League Championship series between the Mets and the Dodgers. Realizing he has lost his bet, he stumbles out of the house. He tries to win back his money by doubling his wager on the next game in the series. The Mets have lost the first three games, and he is certain that the Dodgers will win again. His wager now stands at $30,000, more than he can afford to pay.
As the film progresses, his drug use and drinking becomes more prolific and his behavior spins out of control. He is drinking and driving while he listens to the final moments of the next game in the pennant series. When the Dodgers lose again, he shoots out his car stereo. At another crime scene, he rifles through the car and finds some drugs which he stashes in his suit jacket. However, he is too impaired to secure the drugs, and they fall out onto the street. His colleagues look at him in horror, and he tries to play it off by instructing them to enter the drugs into evidence.
At the First Communion
of one of his children, he doubles his wager again on the series, bringing his potential losings to $60,000. The friend who places his bets for him urges him not to deepen his predicament, but the Lieutenant is positive that the Mets cannot continue to win, as no team has ever come back from three straight losses to begin a series. As his criminality deepens, the Lieutenant pulls over two young girls who have borrowed their father's car to go to a club. Without proper licenses, he forces the girls to strip and simulate oral sex while he masturbates.
After the Mets win game 6 of the series, he tries to double his wager again. His friend refuses to make the wager, insisting that the bookie would kill him for nothing, and it would be suicidal to owe him $120,000. The Lieutenant is unwavering in his belief that the Mets cannot win the series, and he appears to heavily identify with Darryl Strawberry
, whose at-bats are the only real action shown from the series. He calls the bookie to place the bet, and the bookie says he will think about taking it.
Continuing his drug use, the Lieutenant picks up his $30,000 share from the drug dealer who sold the evidence he had stolen. He then goes to the church where the nun was raped and finds her kneeling in prayer before the altar. In a near-stupor from his drinking and drug use, he tells her that most cops would just run her attackers through the system but that if she will identify them he will give her justice, implying that he will kill them for her. She repeats that she has forgiven them already then gets up and leaves the lieutenant alone on his knees at the altar. The lieutenant suffers an emotional breakdown. He sees the crucified Christ standing in the aisle of the church and, in tears, begins to hurl curses at him before finally confessing his own weakness and begging forgiveness for his crimes. He crawls to the figure before him and kisses the bloody feet only to look up and see a woman holding a gold chalice. The woman tells him that the two rapists pawned the chalice at her husband's store.
The Lieutenant then tracks down the two rapists and cuffs them together. He holds them at gunpoint and then has them light a crack pipe which he then smokes with them as they watch the Mets make their historic comeback and win the pennant. Instead of booking the two rapists, he takes them to the Port Authority
and puts them on a bus with the cigar box containing the $30,000. He insists that they take the bus and never come back to New York City. After he leaves the terminal, he parks on the street. Another car drives up beside him, and a voice yells, "Hey, cop!" before several shots ring out. The film closes as bystanders realize the Lieutenant has been murdered and start to gather around his car.
). The NC-17 cut was described for "sexual violence, strong sexual situations and dialogue, graphic drug use".
Blockbuster
, the largest video rental company in the United States, had a policy prohibiting the purchase and rental of NC-17 films. An R-rated cut was created specifically so that Blockbuster would rent out the film. The R-rated cut was described with "drug use, language, violence, and nudity".
, with 29 positive reviews out of 38. Writing in the New York Times, Janet Maslin
praised Ferrara's talent for making "gleefully down-and-dirty films", continuing, "He has come up with his own brand of supersleaze, in a film that would seem outrageously, unforgivably lurid if it were not also somehow perfectly sincere." Desson Howe called the Lieutenant "a notch nicer than Satan" in the Washington Post, and he cites Keitel's work as the film's saving grace, "It is only the strength of Keitel's performance that gives his personality human dimension.".
Mark Kermode
has mentioned that the film was praised as "a powerful tale of redemptive Catholicism". Roger Ebert
stated that "in the Bad Lieutenant, Keitel has given us one of the great screen performances in recent years". Martin Scorsese
named this movie as the fifth best movie of the 1990s.
, The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans
, was released in 2009, seventeen years following the first film's release. The film was directed by Werner Herzog
and described as being "neither a sequel nor a remake."
Crime film
Crime films are films which focus on the lives of criminals. The stylistic approach to a crime film varies from realistic portrayals of real-life criminal figures, to the far-fetched evil doings of imaginary arch-villains. Criminal acts are almost always glorified in these movies.- Plays and films...
-drama film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
directed by Abel Ferrara
Abel Ferrara
Abel Ferrara is an American film screenwriter and director. He is best known as an independent filmmaker of such films as The Driller Killer , Ms. 45 , King of New York , Bad Lieutenant and The Funeral .-Early life:Ferrara was born in the Bronx of Italian and Irish descent...
and starring Harvey Keitel
Harvey Keitel
Harvey Keitel is an American actor. Some of his most notable starring roles were in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Ridley Scott's The Duellists and Thelma and Louise, Ettore Scola's That Night in Varennes, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Jane Campion's The...
as the eponymous "bad lieutenant
Lieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...
". The screenplay was written by actress-model Zoë Lund
Zoë Tamerlis Lund
Zoë Tamerlis Lund , also known as Zoë Tamerlis and Zoë Tamerlaine, was a former American musician turned model, actress, and screenwriter. She was best known for her association with Abel Ferrara, in whose movie Ms. 45 she starred...
. She also played a small role in the film. Lund had been discovered by Ferrara and had starred in his earlier film, Ms. 45
Ms. 45
Ms. 45, also known as Angel of Vengeance, is a 1981 American low-budget exploitation film directed by Abel Ferrara and starring Zoë Tamerlis Lund...
.
The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard
Un Certain Regard
Un Certain Regard is a section of the Cannes Film Festival's Official Selection. It is run at the Salle Debussy, parallel to the competition for the Palme d'Or.This section was introduced in 1978 by Gilles Jacob...
section at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival
1992 Cannes Film Festival
- Jury :*Gérard Depardieu *John Boorman *Carlo Di Palma *Jamie Lee Curtis *Joële Van Effenterre *Lester James Peries *Nana Djordjadze *Pedro Almodóvar *René Cleitman...
.
Plot
The film opens in an outer borough of New York City, where The Lieutenant (Harvey KeitelHarvey Keitel
Harvey Keitel is an American actor. Some of his most notable starring roles were in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Ridley Scott's The Duellists and Thelma and Louise, Ettore Scola's That Night in Varennes, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Jane Campion's The...
) drops his two sons off at Catholic school. After they leave the car, and before he drives to work, the Lieutenant takes a few small bumps of cocaine. His first case is a double murder. He wanders away from the scene to get some coffee, and across the street, he watches a petty thief rifling through the trunks of parked cars, which the Lieutenant ignores. In the next scene, the detective approaches a group of drug dealers, who run off as he approaches. The Lieutenant follows one dealer into an apartment building and up the stairs. The dealer waits for him in the hallway, and the Lieutenant gives him a bag of drugs from a crime scene. The Lieutenant quickly smokes some crack, and then sets aside a portion of the drugs for himself. The thief promises to give him the money he makes from selling the drugs in a few days. At an apartment, the Lieutenant gets drunk and engages in a threesome with two women, showing his naked muscled body.
Meanwhile, a nun (Frankie Thorn
Frankie Thorn
Frankie Thorn is an American actress best known for her role as "The Nun" opposite Harvey Keitel in Abel Ferrara's controversial 1992 film Bad Lieutenant .- Filmography :-External links:...
) is raped in a church by two young hoodlums. In the hospital, the Lieutenant spies on her naked body as she is examined by the doctors, who explain that the two boys also raped her with objects like a crucifix. The Lieutenant listens to her confession, where she admits to having no feelings of animosity towards her attackers. She sees the attack as an opportunity for God's grace to be bestowed on them.
The next morning, the Lieutenant is passed out on the couch in his home as his two young daughters watch TV. His family comes to the table for breakfast, and he stirs. He immediately flips the TV to see the results of a National League Championship series between the Mets and the Dodgers. Realizing he has lost his bet, he stumbles out of the house. He tries to win back his money by doubling his wager on the next game in the series. The Mets have lost the first three games, and he is certain that the Dodgers will win again. His wager now stands at $30,000, more than he can afford to pay.
As the film progresses, his drug use and drinking becomes more prolific and his behavior spins out of control. He is drinking and driving while he listens to the final moments of the next game in the pennant series. When the Dodgers lose again, he shoots out his car stereo. At another crime scene, he rifles through the car and finds some drugs which he stashes in his suit jacket. However, he is too impaired to secure the drugs, and they fall out onto the street. His colleagues look at him in horror, and he tries to play it off by instructing them to enter the drugs into evidence.
At the First Communion
First Communion
The First Communion, or First Holy Communion, is a Catholic Church ceremony. It is the colloquial name for a person's first reception of the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. Catholics believe this event to be very important, as the Eucharist is one of the central focuses of the Catholic Church...
of one of his children, he doubles his wager again on the series, bringing his potential losings to $60,000. The friend who places his bets for him urges him not to deepen his predicament, but the Lieutenant is positive that the Mets cannot continue to win, as no team has ever come back from three straight losses to begin a series. As his criminality deepens, the Lieutenant pulls over two young girls who have borrowed their father's car to go to a club. Without proper licenses, he forces the girls to strip and simulate oral sex while he masturbates.
After the Mets win game 6 of the series, he tries to double his wager again. His friend refuses to make the wager, insisting that the bookie would kill him for nothing, and it would be suicidal to owe him $120,000. The Lieutenant is unwavering in his belief that the Mets cannot win the series, and he appears to heavily identify with Darryl Strawberry
Darryl Strawberry
Darryl Eugene Strawberry is a former American Major League Baseball outfielder who is well-known both for his play on the field and for his controversial behavior off it...
, whose at-bats are the only real action shown from the series. He calls the bookie to place the bet, and the bookie says he will think about taking it.
Continuing his drug use, the Lieutenant picks up his $30,000 share from the drug dealer who sold the evidence he had stolen. He then goes to the church where the nun was raped and finds her kneeling in prayer before the altar. In a near-stupor from his drinking and drug use, he tells her that most cops would just run her attackers through the system but that if she will identify them he will give her justice, implying that he will kill them for her. She repeats that she has forgiven them already then gets up and leaves the lieutenant alone on his knees at the altar. The lieutenant suffers an emotional breakdown. He sees the crucified Christ standing in the aisle of the church and, in tears, begins to hurl curses at him before finally confessing his own weakness and begging forgiveness for his crimes. He crawls to the figure before him and kisses the bloody feet only to look up and see a woman holding a gold chalice. The woman tells him that the two rapists pawned the chalice at her husband's store.
The Lieutenant then tracks down the two rapists and cuffs them together. He holds them at gunpoint and then has them light a crack pipe which he then smokes with them as they watch the Mets make their historic comeback and win the pennant. Instead of booking the two rapists, he takes them to the Port Authority
Port Authority Bus Terminal
The Port Authority Bus Terminal is the main gateway for interstate buses into Manhattan in New York City...
and puts them on a bus with the cigar box containing the $30,000. He insists that they take the bus and never come back to New York City. After he leaves the terminal, he parks on the street. Another car drives up beside him, and a voice yells, "Hey, cop!" before several shots ring out. The film closes as bystanders realize the Lieutenant has been murdered and start to gather around his car.
Cast
- Harvey KeitelHarvey KeitelHarvey Keitel is an American actor. Some of his most notable starring roles were in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Ridley Scott's The Duellists and Thelma and Louise, Ettore Scola's That Night in Varennes, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Jane Campion's The...
as The Lieutenant - Victor ArgoVictor ArgoVictor Argo was a Puerto Rican - American actor who usually played the part of a tough bad guy in his movies.-Early years:...
as Beat Cop - Zoë LundZoë Tamerlis LundZoë Tamerlis Lund , also known as Zoë Tamerlis and Zoë Tamerlaine, was a former American musician turned model, actress, and screenwriter. She was best known for her association with Abel Ferrara, in whose movie Ms. 45 she starred...
as Zoe - Vincent LarescaVincent LarescaVincent Laresca is an American actor.Laresca first appeared in film in 1992, in the movie Juice as Radames. Since then, he has appeared in many popular films, including The Devil's Advocate, The Aviator, Empire, Coach Carter, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and Baz Luhrmann's William...
as J.C. - Frankie ThornFrankie ThornFrankie Thorn is an American actress best known for her role as "The Nun" opposite Harvey Keitel in Abel Ferrara's controversial 1992 film Bad Lieutenant .- Filmography :-External links:...
as The Nun - Fernando Véléz as Julio
- Joseph Micheal Cruz as Paulo
- Paul HippPaul Hipp-Early years:Paul Hipp was born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Hipp left Pennsylvania for New York City immediately after high school, starting his career playing for tips on the streets of Greenwich Village while studying acting with Mira Rostova and at HB Studio with...
as Jesus - Frank AdonisFrank AdonisFrank Adonis , sometimes credited as Frank Martin, is an American film and television actor.-Selected filmography:*The French Connection as Bidder*Eyes of Laura Mars as Sal Volpe...
as Large - Anthony Ruggiero as Lite
- Victoria Bastel as Bowtay
- Paul CalderónPaul CalderonPaul Calderón is an American actor.He was born in Puerto Rico. Calderón moved to New York with his family at the age of six, where he grew up on the streets of the Lower East Side and Spanish Harlem...
as Cop #1 - Leonard Thomas as Cop #2
- Peggy Gormley as Lieutenant's wife
- Stella Keitel as Lieutenant's daughter
- Brian McElroy and Frankie Acciato as Lieutenant's sons
Alternate versions
The film was originally rated NC-17, one of the few movies to be rated NC-17 with drug use cited as one of the main reasons (the only other film being Comfortably NumbComfortably Numb (film)
Comfortably Numb is a 1995 film directed by Gavin O'Connor....
). The NC-17 cut was described for "sexual violence, strong sexual situations and dialogue, graphic drug use".
Blockbuster
Blockbuster (movie rental store)
Blockbuster LLC is an American-based provider of home video and video game rental services, originally through video rental shops , later adding DVD-by-mail, streaming video on demand, and kiosks. At its peak in 2009, Blockbuster had up to 60,000 employees. There are around 1700 Blockbuster...
, the largest video rental company in the United States, had a policy prohibiting the purchase and rental of NC-17 films. An R-rated cut was created specifically so that Blockbuster would rent out the film. The R-rated cut was described with "drug use, language, violence, and nudity".
Reception
Bad Lieutenant has a 76% 'Fresh' rating on Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, with 29 positive reviews out of 38. Writing in the New York Times, Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times. She served as the Times film critic from 1977–1999.- Biography :...
praised Ferrara's talent for making "gleefully down-and-dirty films", continuing, "He has come up with his own brand of supersleaze, in a film that would seem outrageously, unforgivably lurid if it were not also somehow perfectly sincere." Desson Howe called the Lieutenant "a notch nicer than Satan" in the Washington Post, and he cites Keitel's work as the film's saving grace, "It is only the strength of Keitel's performance that gives his personality human dimension.".
Mark Kermode
Mark Kermode
Mark Kermode is an English film critic, musician and a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. He contributes to Sight and Sound magazine, The Observer newspaper and BBC Radio 5 Live, where he presents Kermode and Mayo's Film Reviews with Simon Mayo on Friday afternoons...
has mentioned that the film was praised as "a powerful tale of redemptive Catholicism". Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
stated that "in the Bad Lieutenant, Keitel has given us one of the great screen performances in recent years". Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
named this movie as the fifth best movie of the 1990s.
Sequel
An unrelated follow-upSequel
A sequel is a narrative, documental, or other work of literature, film, theatre, or music that continues the story of or expands upon issues presented in some previous work...
, The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is a 2009 American crime drama film directed by Werner Herzog and starring Nicolas Cage.-Overview:...
, was released in 2009, seventeen years following the first film's release. The film was directed by Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog Stipetić , known as Werner Herzog, is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and opera director.He is often considered as one of the greatest figures of the New German Cinema, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner...
and described as being "neither a sequel nor a remake."