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Do you like Nicolas Cage? He ate a bug once, for real, in a movie. Do you think Nicolas Cage is a fucking weirdo sellout who maybe used to be an actor who could have done something with his career other than make movies such as Con Air or that piece of shit Ghost Rider? Do you ever find yourself wondering about Nicolas Cage's physical appearance or the provenance of the hair on his head? Remember Nicolas Cage in that remake of Kiss of Death with that red-headed tool who's on one of the C.S.I. shows now? Wasn't Nicolas Cage pretty good in Adaptation and Matchstick Men? Do you think of Nicolas Cage as a has-been? Have you ever found yourself annoyed because there's no "h" in Nicolas Cage's first name? Do you ever get angry about how it is, exactly, that Nicolas Cage seems to be making piles of money with movies like National Treasure: Book of Secrets?

Forget star Harvey Keitel and director Abel Ferrara from 1992's Bad Lieutenant. There is only this movie, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, about a police lieutenant in New Orleans who does at least one good thing before he starts doing a whole bunch of bad things, suffering with chronic back pain and drug dependency while working on a case involving a horrific murder of immigrants, worrying about his prostitute girlfriend (Eva Mendes, hey, she was also in Ghost Rider), his gambling debts, and lots of other things that pile up in a dark cloud over his head as he grows increasingly hunched-over and manic, coughing out that psycho-forced Nicolas Cage laugh with that crazy-eyes Nicolas Cage skull-faced grin, having a series of really bad days, methodically doing the wrong thing to varying result. There's a lucky crack pipe, longueurs featuring alligators and iguanas, boom microphones occasionally dipping into the frames, and lots of laughs. Does it matter what kind of laughs they are? There are other actors involved, Val Kilmer, Fairuza Balk (missing from the game for awhile, nice to see her back), standout Jennifer Coolidge as a sad alcoholic, and lots of scary energy from Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner as an erratic drug lord. This could easily be a television series. The "Bad Lieutenant" could be a franchise character, played by a different actor every week, an actor who has done bad things and wants to cleanse themselves in art and flat cinematography. The "Bad Lieutenant" could be you or me on a really fucking bad day. This movie is fake and real and staged and documentary and professional and amateur, and it has a really lousy soundtrack. Werner Herzog kinda ends up following Nicolas Cage around like you would trail a wounded animal to see where it will lie down to die. Nicolas Cage is a fucking artist. Did you know there's gonna be a Ghost Rider 2?

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