Director: Abel Ferrara
Writer: Zoe Lund, Abel Ferrara
Cinematography: Ken Kelsch
Editor: Anthony Redman
Music: Joe Delia
Notable Cast: Harvey Keitel, Victor Argo, Zoe Lund, Paul Calderone, Leonard Thomas, G. Elvis Phillips, Frankie Thorn, Paul Hipp, Bo Dietl, Gene Canfield, Darryl Strawberry, Chris “Mad Dog” Russo
From 1990-1995, Abel Ferrara was not only the king of New York, he was the king of indie cinema. A poet of the streets. Along with his writing partner, Nicholas St. John, Ferrara was the voice of a city, THE city, the only city in the world that truly gives a fuck. Back in those days, Ferrara was a true madman. After directing the porn film, 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy, he set out for his next feature, The Driller Killer. Ferrara’s exterior belies the intellectual within.
Making this horror flick was a very smart move. Like Cronenberg, Ferrara recognized he could use the horror genre to sneak in some of his favorite tropes and themes, all while disguised as genre trash the masses lap up with a spoon. While I am not a big fan of the film, which I actually only saw recently when Arrow released it on Blu (kudos to motherfucking Arrow Films! Those cats are single handedly keeping genre films alive on physical media, and not just burning it to some DVD to make a quick buck like some outfits of the past, Arrow puts so much care and attention into each release. While I may not love The Driller Killer, you’re damn straight I bought that bad boy the first opportunity I got!), it’s definitely interesting and you can see Ferrara’s origin story start to unspool. Taken on its own, whatever. But when you know the rest of his ouvre, it fits, it works, it transcends.
Ms. 45 has legions of fans, and I dutifully bought it on Blu when it came out, which is the first time I saw the film, much like The Driller Killer. Not sure how much people understand or remember now, but getting movies after their release back then was nigh on impossible, especially for smaller, low budget flicks. It wasn’t until university, in Greenwich Village, in my teens, that I even discovered Kim’s Video. My whole life had been relegated to neighborhood video stores, the quality of which was usually… questionable. Let’s just say there were no Quentin Tarantinos working the counters of these joints. As a result, I had severe blindspots for certain filmmakers, Ferrara one of them.
Back to Ms. 45, I can’t really say much about the flick. I love Zoe Lund (RIP), primarily and basically solely for Bad Lieutenant. Her script, and her performance in the film, are on an insane level few others ever reach. She’s fantastic. But in Ms. 45? I’m sorry, her performance is terrible, and it derails the whole thing. I love the basic idea though, it’s a great concept.
Ferrara then spends the rest of the 1980’s working his ass off, but to little artistic success. He becomes a director for hire almost, but ever the clever mofo, he was getting ready to pounce. And pounce he did with 1990’s King of New York, a fucking magnum opus. King of New York was my first introduction to Abel Ferrara as a filmmaker. And it was not one of my movie friends who turned me on to it, no, somehow it was my dear departed old man.
My father, a retired NYPD officer, was weird when it came to movies, because there were ones he loved, but he was never a movie guy. To get him to take us to the movies as kids was a chore. “I don’t wait on lines,” he would say. But somehow he stumbled on to genius films. He introduced me to Michael Mann through Thief. Now, obviously, my father at the time had no idea who Michael Mann was, all he knew was he loved Thief, “an essay in macho.” And he’d always say, “hey, put on Thief.” He had gotten someone to tape it off HBO onto a VHS tape, so he could watch it whenever he wanted.
It’s interesting thinking back to that, how two of my favorite filmmakers of all time were my favorites because of my father, who was not a movie guy. He fucking loved King of New York, especially the parts where Walken, as Frank White, dances. And just as a side note, but my father would always remember movies differently from how they were. We’d be watching King of New York for the umpteenth time, and all of a sudden he’d say, “hey, that scene was never there before,” and he’d swear they added it or we were watching some other edition, even though no other cut of that film exists, so far as I know. My father may have been, in addition to my entrée into great filmmakers, my first exposure to the Mandela Effect. I’m convinced he was shifting realities slightly and remembering a slightly altered past. He was just way too smart and sharp to have that faulty of a memory.
My father was also a fan of the Warren Beatty/Annette Bening film Bugsy. I can’t say the same myself. Could never grok to Beatty. Whatever. I don’t think my father actually loved the flick, but he did love Harvey Keitel in the movie, and make references to it occasionally. All is a long way of explaining how I got to see Bad Lieutenant for the first time in the theater on its original run.
It’d been two years since King of New York, and my Ferrara anticipation was high. I was hearing news of some gonzo new NC-17 flick he was coming out with starring Harvey Keitel, and I had to see it. But how? It was only playing in the city at Angelika, how the hell am I going to get my old man to not only take me to the movies, but to the city no less?!? Madness. He won’t even take me to the theater five minutes away. I was going to have to use all my, admittedly limited, powers of persuasion. He loved King of New York, he loved Keitel in Bugsy, and he used to be a cop.
“Daddy, there’s a new movie from the guy who did King of New York, starring that guy you liked from Bugsy, playing a messed up cop.” Yes, I call my father, Daddy. That was his name since I could remember, sue me. I can’t remember the specifics, but it worked. I convinced him to take me to the city to see Bad Lieutenant at the Angelika Film Center on Houston. I could not believe my fucking life.
We got into the small movie theater, took our seats, and waited for the insanity to begin. And as we’re sitting there, who walks in to take a seat but Spike motherfucking Lee and his girlfriend (now wife)! I was a mere 16 years old at the time, I had very little exposure to movie stars or any of that kind of shit. I met Darryl Strawberry when I was like 10 up in the Catskills (which is pretty fucking wild considering the movie we’re discussing here. Like, seriously wild.), but that was about it. And here is Spike Lee! I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE Do The Right Thing. Top 10 movie of all time, just sublime shit. My father was also a lover of Do The Right Thing (he loved the cops, naturally), so we were both impressed, him slightly, me very much so. How great is that? I got to see what would end up being one of my favorite movies of all time with the writer/director of one of my favorite movies of all time. Only in New York. Man, I really miss the old Angelika. There was nothing like it.
After the movie was over and the lights came up, my father turned to me and said, “Now that was a real cop.” Honest to God, those were the first words out of his mouth. How dark is that? In his later years he’d open up about his time on the force, and the things he saw were disturbing, to say the least. He was a beat cop in the East Village back in the 60’s and 70’s, so he saw some shit go down. Unspeakable things.
For him to say the cop we see Harvey Keitel portray in Bad Lieutenant is a “real cop,” my God. All these years later I’m not sure I’ve fully digested the ramifications and stark reality of that. When my father lay dying, and the priest came in to give last rites, he asked my father if there was anything he’d like to confess. He said, “Father, there are some things that are unconfessable.”
Bad Lieutenant encapsulates all these themes, and packages them in such a brutal, uncompromising manner, one can’t help but be grabbed by the collar and slapped across the face by it. I was bowled over by the film and it has remained in my top 3 of all time ever since that fateful Saturday afternoon in November, 1992.
But this does beg the question, as it always does here… how were the 1ST 5 Minutes?
1ST 5 MINUTES
No production company logos, no nothing to start the movie. Literally nothing.
A white screen, and then the inimitable, unmistakable voice of sports talk radio’s Chris “Mad Dog” Russo going on a classic rant about the New York Mets and their chances in some fictional playoff series against the Los Angeles Dodgers where they’re already down 3 games to none. This is quintessential New York right here. Long before Mad Dog became a staple of ESPN’s national broadcasts, he was on New York’s 660 WFAN, and was a staple of my youth. He has such a distinctive voice and way of speaking, the minute I heard him in the movie, my eyes lit up. What a way to start a movie. Mad Dog keeps talking over the opening credits, which utilize an interesting font, I must say.
Look, I already know this is going to be fucking amazing. I mean, the sheer genius to start a movie like this. The white screen with black credits is an immediate attention getter. Whatever they did to convince Mad Dog to do this… amazing. Just brilliant. I don’t know if Ferrara thought of this, or Zoe Lund, or what, but my hat is off to them. So fucking good. At this point in the movie you don’t know how integral the Mets and this playoff series will be to the story. But let me tell you, the way Ferrara and Lund weave this playoff throughout the picture, tying the fate of the Mets and Dodgers to Keitel’s LT, their increasing desperation mirroring each other with uncanny precision, it’s simply incredible. An amazing creative feat. And not for nothing, but how on Earth did Ferrara get permission to use actual MLB footage of the Mets and Dodgers on such a shoestring budget? What an absolute madman.
And then who does Mad Dog take a call from? None other than Bruce from Bayside! Listeners of Mad Dog at the time would recognize this caller as someone who would frequently call in and tussle with Mad Dog. This is so fucking New York. Hyper specific shit. Extreme minutiae. It’s unreal, and we haven’t even seen one filmed image yet. Completely out of sight.
And the first image we see may as well be where I grew up, it’s such a prototypical outer borough middle class New York City neighborhood. The brick, the siding, the handrails. Mad Dog’s voice fades out as we’re left with this static shot of what winds up being LT’s home, as we get our first look at Keitel’s titular LT as he exits the house and gets into his car. Two kids in Catholic School uniforms race out of the house right after, to the waiting car. LT’s impatient, nervous, jumpy. Quizzes his kids about why they keep missing their bus, then lashes out at them, drops a couple of “fucks,” and is all around acting way out of proportion to what their perceived transgression is.
The kids start arguing over the Dodgers and Mets, to which LT responds succinctly, “Strawberry’s killin’ ‘em.”
Once he drops them off, we see why he was so on edge the whole ride as he takes out some coke and starts doing bumps, right there next to the Catholic school as kids walk right by. A rosary notably hangs from the rearview mirror as he does the coke. Right off the bat, Jesus is making his presence felt in the film. LT is a religious man in a spiral. Bad Lieutenant is nothing if not devoutly Catholic. It wears its heart on its sleeve, in the best way possible.
If we’re watching this film in a vacuum, all we know at this point is that Keitel is a cokehead father with a short fuse who likes Darryl Strawberry and sports talk radio. But the next scene solidifies what’s so great and interesting about this film. We cut to a crime scene, two girls dead in a car, and we get the indelible image of Keitel walking up to the crime scene as he places his badge on his jacket. He’s a fucking cop. Yes! However hooked you were before this reveal, you’re most certainly hooked at this point.
We then get our first look at real life detective turned actor, Bo Dietl (who solved a case of two nuns who were raped in real life and served as a light inspiration for the plot), and at the very last second of these 1ST 5, the late, great character actor, Victor Argo! I fucking love Vic Argo, this dude has been in some of my favorite flicks of all time. Crimes and Misdemeanors, Bad Lieutenant, The Last Temptation of Christ, King of New York, True Romance, Dangerous Game. That’s a killer fucking line up! And he has one of the best lines a little later on in the film, that I use all the time, “Hey, fuck that noise.” I know it’s a somewhat common phrase, but that was the first time I had heard it and I instantly fell in love with his delivery. Argo’s the kind of actor they just don’t make anymore. RIP, brother.
And that’s it for the 1ST 5 Minutes of Bad Lieutenant. I don’t know about you, but as soon as I hear Mad Dog’s “Hey folks…” to open the film, I’m in, and I’m in all the fucking way. What a way to start a picture. May just be one of the greatest openings ever, because of how out of left field it is (pun only slightly intended). I don’t know about you, but no way in hell am I taking this flick off after 5 minutes!
The rest of the flick
Almost every scene in this film could be a nominee for my Favorite Scene, so let’s just go through the movie in chronological order, highlighting the very best this film has to offer.
When LT is inspecting the dead bodies, his gaze immediately drifts to the breasts of the dead females in the car. It’s quite morbid, but very much in line with stories my father would tell me from his days as a cop. LT is the perfected, for lack of a better term, personification of the corrupt cop whose soul has been stolen by the accumulation of travesties and evil he’s been exposed to on a daily basis on the force.
He gathers with a few other cops, all legendary actors in their own right, to discuss the Mets/Dodgers series. While the other cops think the Dodgers are a safe bet, LT steers all 3 of them to place bets on the Mets, despite earlier telling his kids that Strawberry, now of the Dodgers, was killing the Mets. Clearly he’s running some kind of scheme here, acting as bookie for the other cops, while in the very next scene calling his own bookie to place a wager on the Dodgers (while ignoring a guy robbing people’s trunks just across the street). Through the dialogue, we find out he’s up 15k from betting on the Dodgers, and will keep riding them for another 15k bet, despite his own bookie telling him to quit while he’s ahead.
In the business, we call this foreshadowing.
The next scene is quite controversial, but has nothing to do with what’s happening on screen, per se. Schoolly D is a rapper that Abel Ferrara has used extensively throughout his filmmaking career. Mr. D provides the amazing backing song for the cops’ raid on Frank White in King of New York, Am I Black Enough For You?, and the truly fantastic song, Signifying Rapper, for Bad Lieutenant. The song features in the film FOUR different times, all to great effect. The first instance was a scene where LT seems like he’s busting a drug dealer, but it’s a ruse, as once he chases the guy into a neighboring building, it turns out this guy is who LT uses to sell the drugs LT steals from evidence.
But when you watch the film now, there’s NO fucking Schoolly D hotness. There’s nothing, no music at all, just the diagetic sounds of the street. And why? Cause that scumbag Bobby Plant from Led Zeppelin decided to sue Schoolly because he felt the riff in Signifying Rapper was too close to the riff in Zeppelin’s Kashmir. Putting aside the fact that Led Zeppelin is notorious for stealing other people’s shit, they didn’t decide to sue until over 5 years after the flick was released, like somehow the existence of the song in this film threatened them or was so egregious a violation that it had to be removed wholecloth.
Instead of coming to an amicable resolution, Zeppelin wanted a ton of cash to keep the song in. Yup, they’re all about artistic integrity and not an extra sailboat or summer home in Ibiza, no no no, Zeppelin cares about THE ART! Such unremitting pieces of dog shit. I won’t say the film is ruined by the removal of Signifying Rapper, but it is a lesser film, especially if you know the film with its original soundtrack. The movie was released on VHS and Laserdisc with the song included, but some time right before DVD, it was removed, and has never been released again with that song.
Meanwhile, you can still buy the song, you can still find a million versions on YouTube… shoot, it even plays as the backing music for the trailer on Amazon Prime, but having it in a seminal film from one of America’s greatest filmmakers? NAH! No song for you!
Well worth it, in my opinion. Hard to believe Bad Lieutenant could go any harder, but with the Schoolly D track, the film goes as hard as is humanly possible.
The next scene is quite controversial and is one of the main reasons the flick got hit with an NC-17 rating. If you watch Bad Lieutenant on any of the streamers, it’s the shit R rated version, which is terrible and inferior in every way to the original cut, but the scene with the two ladies is cut and shot VERY differently, and is most certainly worth a gander for any fans of the film.
As it is, this scene is great, and emblematic of the film writ large. Scored to Johnny Ace’s Pledging My Love, a sweet, romantic song (a love song for all the drugs, perhaps?) for a pitch black scene of sexual degradation, gluttony, and finally, blasphemy, as a naked, drunk, high LT mocks Christ on the cross.
That shot of a naked Keitel is fucking iconic, and maybe it’s too easy, but fuck it, it’s my Favorite Shot in the whole film. Full frontal male nudity is rarely seen on screen, so in and of itself it is a shocking image, but when paired within the content and context of the film, it’s sad, gripping, mortifying, desperate, nightmarish. His spiral began before the film even started. You can almost think of the entire movie as the third act in this character’s arc.
This is followed by a great scene where LT, still high and drunk, intervenes in a convenience store robbery where the young cop on scene, brilliantly played by Ferrara regular, G. Elvis Phillips, is overwhelmed and can’t control the situation. LT struts in looking like a fucking mess, orders the beat cop to fetch him a beer, “make sure it’s fuckin’ cold,” before firing his gun into the shelves to quiet the argument between the thieves and the store owner.
LT orders the cop to take the store owner to the station to file a report, while LT’s intimidation tactics force the now timid robbers to hand back the 500 bucks they stole. After taking the money, he lets them go, pockets the cash, and helps himself to some Chips Ahoy cookies. The reveal that the Asian store owner’s young daughter watched it all go down is fantastic. Love when directors layer scenes like this, with simple but extremely powerful payoffs.
And then we get our first look at Zoe Lund’s… Zoe. For all I know she’s playing herself here, as her own life was cut short by her drug addiction, namely heroin and cocaine. She was also quite religious and spoke favorably of Jesus and the Bible. In other words, the perfect person to write a film like this. Her two scenes in this film are unforgettable.
It’s never explained precisely what her relationship with LT is, as both times we see them together she just seems to be the person who helps him get high on heroin and I guess some sort of freebasing? I’m not a druggie, so sometimes in this film it is hard to figure out exactly what drug LT is imbibing. What’s important is that he is constantly doing them, and getting worse, as his spiral to seeming damnation quickens.
Their second scene together, later in the film, contains my absolute Favorite Line in the film. After they’ve both injected heroin (in unbroken shots where we see the needle go in, no idea how they did it but it looks incredibly realistic), and LT is going into a stupor, she recites her vampire speech, and it is the summation of the entire film, and really, humanity in general.
“Vampires are lucky, they can feed on others. We gotta eat away at ourselves. We gotta eat our legs to get the energy to walk. We gotta come, so we can go. We gotta suck ourselves off. We gotta eat away at ourselves til there’s nothing left but appetite…”
Interestingly enough, this entire monologue could be applied to Ferrara’s 1995 masterpiece, The Addiction, starring Lili Taylor and Chris Walken, which deals with very similar themes through the use of the vampire genre, where drinking blood is a metaphor for drug addiction.
Following this, we get one of the more disturbing scenes in a film full of them, where Frankie Thorn’s nun is raped by two neighborhood thugs. This is another scene where Schoolly D’s Signifying Rapper was excised, and replaced with organ music. Needless to say, it changes the whole tenor of the scene. While still disturbing, obviously, it just doesn’t have the same effect as the Schoolly D tune, whose hard beats lend a hard edge the organ music just can’t match. I don’t hate the organ music, it’s just the Schoolly D raises the scene to whole other level of demonic hell.
The cut to Paul Hipp’s Jesus on the cross, screaming in agony as the nun is assaulted, is perhaps overkill, but I love that kind of shit. It’s unexpected, but thematically and tonally consistent. This scene comes almost 20 minutes into the film and is the closest this film will get to a proper plot, as LT comes to see the solving of this case as perhaps absolution for his own twisted soul.
And the cut from this scene to the next is legendary. Off the brutal, explicit rape of this nun, including a gratuitous shot of her pubic hair, we cut to a toddler in front of a TV watching cartoons. The dual worlds LT inhabits mirror his own duality within, where the battle for his soul takes place. We assume he became a cop originally out of a sense of duty and a desire to make wrong right, but lost his way. The Catholic inside him still exists, smothered by the junkie and gambler.
His path to redemption reminds me, weirdly enough, of a passage in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, where the youngest member of the Flyte family, Cordelia, recites for Charles Ryder the “twitch upon a thread” notion of God from G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories. “I caught him with an unseen hook and an invisible line, which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.” God essentially has a fishing line attached to every Catholic in the world, and no matter how far they stray from the path, he can always bring them back. The rape of the nun serves as LT’s twitch upon the thread.
The home scenes for LT are interesting, as his family is aware of what’s happening, at least tangentially, but seem powerless to do anything. The rosary clutching mother-in-law gives him such haunting looks, both here and in a later scene where he does a line off a photo of his wife and daughter. While the other family members see what’s happening externally, the mother-in-law can see the turmoil LT’s soul is in, and she is scared.
LT wakes up in a stupor, switches the TV from cartoons to Game 4 of the Mets/Dodgers series. Initially he thinks the Dodgers are winning, and cheers up, claps his hands, confident he’ll win his latest 15k bet, but it is quickly revealed the Mets are killing the Dodgers and Strawberry’s home run is too little too late. LT’s realization here is amazing. Keitel is so good throughout this picture as he is put through the wringer. There’s never a false note or any artifice to his performance. When he is on, there’s no one better.
We get some more Mad Dog on the radio as LT drives towards a crime scene. A hooker informs him on the sly that there’s a key of coke in the car. LT finds the coke but awkwardly drops it as he tries to hide it in his jacket. Great little scene that showcases all the different little scams LT has going on to fuel his addiction and make him extra money on the side.
The scene with all the cops gathered, discussing the rape of the nun, has a great exchange between LT and Gene Canfield’s Detective Gene. Finding out the church has put up a 50,000 dollar reward to catch the rapists, LT expresses the classic cynical attitude many cops would recognize as genuine and very, very common, unfortunately, among the police. Canfield takes objection to LT’s characterization of the church and calling nuns “chicks in penguin suits.” He asks LT if he is a Catholic, to which LT states simply, “I’m a Catholic,” with a sly grin as he chews his gum.
Ferrara holds the shot on LT as this moment hangs between the two men. Canfield says then why don’t you have a little fucking respect, prompting Vic Argo to utter his indelible, “Hey, fuck that noise” as they segue into talking about the Mets win. They’re all under the assumption LT won big on the Mets, and he doesn’t disabuse them of this. They again want to bet the Dodgers, but he convinces them to “leave it on the Mets.” If only he took his own advice.
We now come to the third instance of Schoolly D’s music being excised from the film, namely when LT is walking into the hospital to check up on the nun who was raped. In this part of the song, we get some truly heinous lyrics, which are a great accompaniment to the shot, from behind, as LT walks into the hospital to where the nun is being examined by doctors and nurses, cataloguing her injuries. LT acts as voyeur as he spies the clearly still in shock nun as she lies naked. As he is peering in, he hears that she was also raped with a crucifix, which somehow is even worse than if she was just penetrated normally. This film is just layers of darkness upon layers of darkness. As she lies there, she slowly turns her head to see LT staring at her. Haunting.
We then get some more Mad Dog Mets ranting on the car radio as LT downs a bottle of booze. A car pulls up next to him, we can’t see the occupants, but they clearly interest him. Cut to him having pulled that car over, revealing the occupants to be two teen girls who took their father’s car on a joyride to the city to go drugging and clubbing. This is a very hard scene to watch, as LT uses their fear of getting caught to make them play act a blowjob as he jerks off. This is about as raw as this film gets. Hard to watch, but hard to look away. It’s simultaneously ridiculously over the top yet totally consistent with the rest of the film. And the scene is nearly 10 minutes long! Unbearable.
And the way LT just wordlessly walks away once he cums. Cold as ice.
Incredibly bold making a movie with a lead character that is so unrelentingly repugnant. I never cared for that bullshit of “your lead character should be likable and someone the audience can root for.” As Argo says, fuck that noise. As long as the lead character is compelling, I don’t care how odious he may be. And LT is one of the most compelling protagonists ever put to celluloid.
In a drug stupor, LT goes to the church where the nun was raped and falls asleep in the pews, only to wake up to his colleagues inspecting the crime scene and conducting an interview of the nun, where it is clear she has no interest in helping the cops find her attackers. But why?
Another scene of LT driving around while listening to Game 5 of the Mets/Dodgers, doing bumps of cocaine galore as he drives. The Mets are winning, and he is starting to lose his mind over it, ends up shooting the radio in disgust at losing yet again, and then we get Keitel’s iconic moan cry for the first time in the film.
The way he cries in the film is so unique, and so incredibly desperate. I remember some audience members laughing in the theater (not Spike, though, he gets it), but I also remember people laughing in the theater at some of the drinking scenes in Leaving Las Vegas. What can you do?
Another family scene with LT at the church for his kid’s communion or confirmation, I don’t know. I’m half Catholic, but I don’t know about all that as I was not brought up religious. Naturally, LT meets his bookie at the church, where he insists on placing a 30,000 dollar bet on the Dodgers to win Game 6. The bookie tries to talk him out of it, but LT is convinced the Dodgers are a lock playing at home.
We know how this is going to end…
A couple of scenes later, he’s at a bar in the daytime, totally wasted, almost nodding off, as he watches the Dodgers about to lose ANOTHER game, meaning he now owes the bookie (or rather, the bookie’s boss) 60,000 dollars!
The scene in the old Limelight club (which was an old church before it was a club, continuing the theme of Christianity being subverted by modern vices) is great. Ferrara, his D.P., the great Ken Kelsch, and Keitel just went into the club on a banging night with a camera and shot this. Yeah sure, some people look into the camera, but so what, this is one of the most realistic club scenes ever put to film, because they were in an actual club on an actual Saturday night and shot it gonzo guerilla style.
He meets the bookie again, who demands the 60 grand, but LT is as high as he’s ever been, losing his mind, laughing off the fact he owes so much money and is being threatened with murder. “I’ve been dodging fuckin’ bullets since I was 14, no one can kill me. I’m blessed, I’m a fuckin’ Catholic.” What a line!
And Keitel laughing at the bookie’s threats! Keitel’s laugh is almost as distinctive as his crying. He’s got a great laugh.
The paranoia scene in the apartment is great, just one shot as it follows a twitchy and itchy LT as he makes sure no one else is around before making the call to the main bookie who’s ready to send some guys to knock him off due to how much he owes from all the losing he’s done since the film began. “I’m no fuckin’ asshole, I’m a fuckin’ cop!” is such a great line. “Either you put in my bet, or you get nothing.” is another banger. Keitel’s embodied perf really shines here. So well studied.
The jump cut sequence of LT listening to Game 7 as he drives around is a master class in filmmaking. Inspired shit by Ferrara, Kelsch and Redman here. Love how the images are jump cut, but the sound is fluid. Ferrara has such good instincts.
LT is headed for the church where the nun was raped. He walks in to find her praying, and their conversation is revealing. She forgives the boys who raped her. LT can’t understand. It’s an amazing exchange as you watch his long buried Christian soul really begin to percolate, first with confusion, then bargaining.
She tells him to talk to Jesus, gives him her rosary beads and leaves. LT breaks down in tears right there on his knees. He looks up. Who’s there? Jesus Christ himself. LT rages at him, calls him a rat fuck, throws the rosary at him. “Where were you? Where the fuck were you?” And then it hits him, and he starts apologizing to Jesus, and confessing his sins almost. It’s incredibly moving, and one of those moments that brings the emotional hit to my tear ducts.
This is easily my Favorite Scene in a movie full of amazing scenes. When LT yells “I’m sorry!” that shit hits. It’s powerful. And deeply devout. “I tried to do the right thing, but I’m weak, I’m too fuckin’ weak! I need you to help me. Help me. I need you to help me. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me, please. Forgive me, Father.”
He crawls to Jesus, who remains silent throughout. Kisses his blood stained feet, looks up and sees a black woman holding the chalice from the rape scene. LT’s absolution was in a drug induced haze. How amazing is that? Mirrors the duality of Christ, fully man and fully God, as the repentance is LT’s “God” aspect, while his habit is the “man” aspect.
The divine and the deviant.
This film is an incredible allegory for the Christian notion of forgiveness and rebirth.
The elderly black woman leads LT to the rapists, who are high on crack in some shithole apartment across the street from the church. They’re watching the Dodgers lose on the TV. LT, curiously enough, gets high with them before taking them down to his car, handcuffed, and placing them in the backseat.
You think he’s taking them to the police station, but he’s got another station in mind (station, stations of the Cross, get it?) and takes them to the bus station in Midtown Manhattan. Even though he’s still high and out of it, he felt God’s love for the first time in a very long time in that church, and is inclined to provide a forgiveness of his own.
Incredibly enough, he buys them bus tickets to get the hell out of New York. After giving both of them some slaps to the face, he takes their handcuffs off and gives them the 30,000 dollars in the cigar box he got earlier (in a scene I did not highlight, it’s basically the only scene in the movie I dislike, it’s just boring), pushes them onto the bus, and forgives them their sins.
He starts crying as the bus departs, and Johnny Ace’s fantastic tune from earlier, Pledging My Love, fades back into the soundtrack. He walks away in a great static shot, then cut to a wide shot of the front of MSG, the music still playing, LT pulls up and idles at the curb. Ferrara holds this shot, as traffic and people pass in front of the camera and behind the car.
Suddenly a car pulls up quickly beside LT, “Hey cop!” and he gets his brains blown out. As passers by start to notice and crowd the car, the song ends, we cut to white, and the black credits continue on the white screen, until moments later, Schooly D’s signature censored track fades in as the credits continue. WOW.
“Now that’s a real cop.”
Think about that.
The One Sheet
Is this the best one sheet ever created in the history of one sheets? Don’t know. But there is no doubt this is the best poster for an indie movie that has ever been released in the world. I have had this poster on my wall since I saw the film. In nearly all the places I’ve lived since leaving home, which is in the double digits at this point, I have had the original Bad Lieutenant poster on my wall. It’s served me well over the years, and has been an instant conversation starter for guests. Worth its weight in gold.
Thank GOD I was able to get my father to take me to Jerry Ohlinger’s (RIP, brutha) movie poster mecca on 14th street to purchase it right after we saw the movie. It was only 15 bucks! In good condition this poster now costs several hundred dollars. What a steal.
Stellar graphic design. If you see this poster and think it’s dope, how do you NOT like the movie? It’s impossible. A great poster captures the entirety of the film, in one rectangular frame. And this poster does it in spades. The iconic image of the naked Keitel, the giant see through block letters, stills from the film, this poster has it all.
And a truly great use of the blurb review to highlight both your writer/director and star, while also being true to the experience of watching the film. Can’t be overstated how well this poster captures the mood, tone and content of the film itself. An absolute triumph on all levels.
A lot of these other posters are just variations on this main one sheet. Either no block letters or different scenes in the letters of LIEUTENANT. They’re all worthy in their own right, but none are as good as the original U.S. one sheet.
Then we have what I think are either fan posters or posters made for some re-release type screenings. While I don’t like to feature unofficial one sheets, these are kind of dope, so why not?
And that does it for Abel Ferrara’s magnum opus, Bad Lieutenant, one of the best films ever made in the history of cinema. Not to be confused with Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, a truly terrible flick from Nicolas Cage and Werner Herzog. The less said about that embarrassing abortion, the better.
Bad Lieutenant is one of the most daring and original films ever released in U.S. cinemas. Featuring Harvey Keitel at the height of his powers, it cemented Abel Ferrara as the voice of an indie generation, presenting a truly audacious work of art. It simply does not get better.
And you know what? It’s all there in the 1ST 5 Minutes as soon as you hear Mad Dog Russo’s inimitable voice ranting about the Mets over the opening credits. Nothing like this film has existed before or since. Singular genius. A subversive masterpiece.
See you in two bumps…