Bad Lieutenant

1992 one man show

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Lieutenant No-Name roams around the city, almost lifelessly, performing cop duties. In the spaces between, he gambles recklessly and obsessively, cavorts with whores, and drugs it up. Darryl Strawberry tries to make it to the World Series with his Dodger friends.

It couldn't have helped that I had to watch this movie in fifteen installments. But it couldn't be helped. I couldn't have my daughters walking in and seeing Harvey Keitel's penis. They'd be traumatized for life. And I couldn't have my wife seeing that either, frankly because it puts mine to shame. And although my son is at an age where he's mature enough to watch more mature movies, seeing Harvey Keitel jacking off next to a car or the rape of a nun might give the lad ideas and lead him into a life of jacking off on cars and/or raping nuns. I nearly like Bad Lieutenant. I think Harvey Keitel is frequently brilliant, but the performance is ultimately an uneven one. At times, his character is so bloated by badness that it begins to look like a parody of itself, more comical than anything else. During one final scene, when Keitel begins excessively whining like a wounded animal, I almost laughed, and I don't think laughter was what Abel Ferrara was going for in that scene. I also found a scene with Jesus almost uproariously funny. Lots of religious imagery in this one, far too much in fact. It almost felt less like watching a movie and more like the pope hurling religious objects at me. And I'm not sure if you've had the experience of the pope hurling objects at you, but it's not something I'd recommend. I do like a bunch of the stark and gritty scenes. Bad Lieutenant refuses to hide anything at all, and as uncomfortable as that might make the typical audience member feel, it does succeed in being realistic and at times emotionally charged. But this is Keitel's show. He's the center of every single scene, and when what he does works, which it frequently does, everything works. And when he doesn't, things unfortunately get sort of goofy.

As a baseball fan, why don't I remember this Mets/Dodgers playoff series?