What exactly is THE BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS? It’s not a sequel, not exactly a remake to BAD LIEUTENANT. Werner Herzog, who directed this new one, claims he hasn’t seen BAD LIEUTENANT. Ferrara claimed he was gonna stop this one from being made. (In my opinion he failed.) This isn’t about the same character and I didn’t notice any mention of the original screenplay in the credits. But it does have a little bit of a BAD LIEUTENANT vibe, and that’s all I can ask.

Actually I hope you guys haven’t seen any of these, but there are some DTV sequels to WILD THINGS and CRUEL INTENTIONS and THE SKULLS that aren’t exactly sequels, they basically just do a similar plot to the original, rehash some of the famous scenes, but with different characters. At first TBL:POCNO seems like they only took the idea of a corrupt, crack smoking cop trying to solve a case and used the title. But then he also starts getting into debt from betting on sports, same as in the original, and there’s even a scene that’s the (tamer) equivalent to the infamous scene where Harvey Keitel pulls over the two teenage girls and has them make faces and show him their asses while he jerks off and talks dirty to them. People are talking this BAD LIEUTENANT up for being weird, but that’s just for a movie starring Nicolas Cage, it’s really not as extreme as the original. It’s a funnier and more mainstream-palatable take on the crack smoking, gambling, cheating, murdering, lovable bastard cop genre.

Before we move on I want to say a few things about the title. I believe PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS can and will be the new funny subtitle to add to everything, finally replacing the tired “ELECTRIC BOOGALOO.” I had been trying to get people to switch to “FAREWELL TO THE FLESH” as an all-purpose fake sequel subtitle, but that’s never gonna catch on. So look how well POCNO works for any movie title:

COMMANDO: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS
AVATAR: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS
KING OF NEW YORK: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS
BAD SANTA: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS
A CHRISTMAS CAROL: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS
GARFIELD: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS

I also think it’s interesting to note that the title screen calls it THE BAD LIEUTENANT. There’s a THE in it. I think we finally found the missing THE from THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS. Part 4 of that series was just FAST AND FURIOUS, because the first THE went to THE FINAL DESTINATION and the second one to THE BAD LIEUTENANT.

Herzog’s THE BAD LIEUTENANT PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS dumps the Catholic themes of Ferrara’s, so unfortunately Nic Cage never hallucinates Jesus and calls him a rat fucker. Instead of a nun getting raped it’s a Senagalese family getting massacred. He gets high about the same amount as Keitel, but never waddles around naked or does that weird Chewbacca cry. Instead he summons his super power, which I usually consider an enjoyable type of overacting, but I read that Nic Cage didn’t like being called “over-the-top” in this movie. So instead I will call it mega-acting. He’s not just firing off on all cylinders all the way through though, he’s like a mess of a guy barely holding it together and then a few times when he smokes crack he goes into the Castor Troy/howditgetburned mega-acting mode. It’s like Popeye eating spinach or Pac-Man eating one of those bigger dots that means for a short period of time he has the power to digest the souls of the dead, except for their eyes.

One thing that’s great about Cage playing this role is that you kind of feel like you’re supposed to root for him. There’s one scene, not a real important one or anything, where he flips out on a pharmacist because she’s taking a personal call and he’s been waiting forever for his prescription. It’s kind of a FALLING DOWN type situation, everybody hates poor service and phone etiquette, so you get a satisfied laugh from this nut getting so fed up that he pulls out his gun and jumps behind the counter to get his Vicodin, leaves his co-pay plus tip and tells the security guard “Get the fuck out of my way!” before leaving triumphantly. Ha ha, wish fulfillment, right? We can all relate to wanting to do something like that, or some of these other things he does, like when he takes crack hits out of a teenage girl’s mouth and forces her boyfriend to watch at gunpoint while he fucks her in the parking lot.

(After that scene a guy in my audience said matter of factly, “He’s out of control.”)

That’s just the beginning of the joyfully unhinged mayhem that happen in this movie. I would have fun listing all of them, but I’m not gonna because I think most of you should just take my word for it and see for yourself. That guy in the theater who might’ve expected a normal Nic Cage movie like NATIONAL TREASURE was right, things are out of control and it’s fun to not know where the line will be drawn. But I want to be clear that it’s not just a bunch of random weirdness. It has a definite plot and structure to it. I like the original BAD LIEUTENANT but I gotta admit it’s a chore to get through, and it took me two times to enjoy it. This is different. This one’s a fun time at the movies.

To me it works brilliantly as a subversion of cop movies. Since DIRTY HARRY and WALKING TALL we’ve seen approximately three hundred and six thousand four hundred and thirty two movies where a cop goes over the line and breaks the rules in order to bust the bad guys. Here is a guy who does that while also stealing drugs from his hooker girlfriend’s clients, threatening old ladies and babies, etc. In fact, he’s so functional while high that he comes up with a master plan to play everybody against each other, and at one point it works so well that even he seems shocked.

Cage himself seems to be enacting some master plan to fuck with our minds, because this is not the first time he’s tried this crazy formula. It’s Nic Cage and Millennium Films (whose movies are mostly DTV, including many with Seagal, Van Damme and Snipes) taking the title of an arty cult movie and giving it to a somewhat respected auteur who you wouldn’t expect to do a movie like this to do a supposed remake that has very little to do with the original. And the funny thing is everybody made fun of him about THE WICKER MAN but he didn’t give a good god damn, he felt confident in using the formula again. What if he was getting at something there that nobody picked up on? I did feel like there were some things going on in that script that people didn’t give it credit for, but it wasn’t as good as this. I’m gonna have to revisit that one. Anyway if he wants to make it a trilogy maybe he could let Abel Ferrara get revenge and remake AGUIRRE or something.

I read in a recent Entertainment Weekly article that Nicolas Cage outbid Leonardo Dicaprio for a dinosaur skull. I wonder what you do with a dinosaur skull? Just mount it on the wall? Anyway, just wanted to throw that out there.

There are many good character actors showing up for little parts, including a sleazy Val Kilmer, a  really memorable Shea Whigham, Xzibit in a really nice suit, Jennifer Coolidge (who I didn’t recognize playing a serious role), and a tight-bodied Fairuza Balk in her underwear making sexual advances at the lieutenant and he has a big bulge in his pants but he’s too high to be interested. The biggest surprise for me was Eva Mendes is actually pretty good as his junkie hooker girlfriend. I always wonder how she even gets in movies, but here she’s not bad. And I thought it was really funny to have the same couple from the inexcusably terrible GHOST RIDER reteaming for something like this.

I love THE BAD LIEUTENANT PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS, and it gives me a new respect for Nicolas Cage. It takes alot to make up for GHOST RIDER, NATIONAL TREASURE and all that shit, but this and KNOWING might do it. I know there are some gossipy stories now about Cage being in debt, but I hope that won’t stop him from aiming his mega-acting powers in the direction of more enjoyably one-of-a-kind movies like this. And I hope he doesn’t have to sell the dinosaur skull to DiCaprio, because he’s earned it.

* * *

If you haven’t seen the movie yet consider that the end of the review, because I want to discuss THE ENDING: PORT OF CALL SPOILERS

This is for my buddy code name Mr. Armageddon who didn’t hate the movie but said it didn’t have a point or meaning. I disagree. For the most part it’s just a cracking crime tale, full of dark humor, inappropriate behavior and occasional spots of violence. Somehow you want this asshole to stumble out the other side alive, but he keeps getting himself in deeper trouble with a wide variety of enemies.

That would be enough for me to enjoy it, but the way it’s bookended with the flooded jail cell opening and the aquarium ending turns it into something of a zen koan. It’s hard to believe all of his addiction happened after the opening, but I think that’s what you’re supposed to assume – he started using Vicodin because of the back injury and it just got out of control from there.

Well, he’s in this sea of corruption, he’s encouraged and tempted to let the prisoner die. But he saves his life instead. A selfless act that ruins his expensive underwear (and pants and shirt I’m assuming, although this is not mentioned). Because of that act he gets the injury, and the addiction, and turns into a bad lieutenant. In the end he somehow manages to pass himself off as a hero and becomes a bad captain and a family man, but he can’t stop being a junkie.

But in the end we learn that what he did really made a difference, because the man he saved did turn his life around. And he wants to return the favor. He sees that the captain is at rock bottom and he seems to basically become his sponsor, be there for him and talk to him. And this should be a redemptive moment for the captain. He was rewarded greatly for all the horrible things he did, and I think that weighs heavily on him. Now finally the one good thing he did a long time ago has come back to him. He actually deserves this help. He really can be a force for good, for positive change in the world.

And he sits there and thinks about it but he comes to the conclusion that he regrets doing it, because it ruined his underwear.

(or that’s what he says anyway. It’s up to you whether he’s serious or not. And I don’t think his new friend knows what to make of it either)

[ratings]

Holy shit, how are you reading this with your eyes closed? I didn’t say you could open them. This is weird. Well, I’m not sure exactly what to say about these amazing powers of yours, so instead I will ignore them and just go ahead and review the movie. Even if you don’t close your eyes, if you make a list of everything you expect to happen in a movie like this, you’d probaly get to cross off everything on the list.

You got the visionary coach who talks The Man into supporting his program. The higher-ups who don’t believe in him at first but are ultimately won over. The disastrous first game where they lose and want to give up. The lovable fat kid who needs to learn to believe in himself. The guy who is too much of a fuckup so they don’t let him on the team but he shows up anyway and proves himself. The part where the coach is too much of an asshole and disillusions the team. The parts where the program gets shut down and the coach has to figure out how to bring it back from the dead. The fights with loved ones who at the end silently show that they’ve changed their minds by showing up to watch the game. And it goes without saying that you have the tense clock-beating come-from-behind-at-the-last-possible-second victory against a bitter rival. And the explanations at the end of what happened to each character (although in this case The Rock narrates it instead of it being written on the screen). And there’s an insipid score that redundantly tells you how triumphant and heartwarming this all is. Now THIS is a movie that could’ve used a soundtrack by RZA.

But one unexpected thing does happen during the end credits: they start showing footage of the 1993 TV documentary that the movie is based on, and you realize that they weren’t lying about this being a true story. Maybe they just chose the clips well, but you see these scenes and exact dialogue that seemed corny and cliche in the movie, and it turns out that they really happened in real life, and there’s footage to prove it. Even the boy-faced token white kid who I assumed was a Hollywood invention turns out to be a real guy, who really looks like that, and really gets emotional talking about how the football team improved his relationship with his mom. The real coach doesn’t look much like The Rock (he’s a white dude with a mustache) but he has a similar tough-guy motivational speaker vibe and makes the exact same speeches that The Rock made.

So why the fuck make a movie based on a movie? This documentary already exists, apparently, put it out on DVD and I’m sure we’ll all enjoy it more than the fake re-enactment. Well, there’s exactly one reason to make this movie: The Rock. To showcase The Rock, and to inspire The Rock.

Apparently they’ve been trying to make this movie for years, at various times starring Bruce Willis, Nic Cage or Sylvester Stallone. And I like all those guys but I can’t imagine any of them pulling it of like The Rock. This is a guy who sweats positivity. Now days most of our heroes are cynical tough guys with a pessimistic view of the world. And I’m not complaining. But here is a good old fashioned “believe in yourself” cornball hero, the Mr. T type of hero who is gonna come in and save the community center and get the kids off the street and help an old lady carry her groceries home. It used to be that was expected of heroes, so you saw it too much and it was phony. But now it’s kind of a risk to play a character like that. Luckily, The Rock is exactly the guy to make it believable. I have read that the movie is very personal to The Rock because he got into alot of trouble with the law when he was a teen and he feels that his high school football team is what turned him around.

But I don’t think you’d need to know that about The Rock to see that he really believes in what this movie is saying, it’s not just a job to him.
At his side you also have the rapper Xzibit as the assistant coach. Although he is best known to America for facilitating the pimping of rides (and to me for providing vehicles to Ice Cube in XxX STATE OF THE UNION) this is another tough cookie who came from a violent background and he is very believable in the role. He doesn’t get a huge amount of dialogue though (they even cut out some of what you see in the trailer) but he looks good at The Rock’s side.

Speaking of looking good, I don’t want to sound gay, but it’s 2006 so who gives a fuck if I sound gay. The Rock is the best dressed former wrestler of all time. I’m not criticizing any other former wrestlers, but the world of wrestling has its own sense of fashion that looks silly to the outside world (just like funk music, Serenity, anime, or the evil clowns with the giant pants) and most of the guys retain some of that when they move on. But not The Rock. There aren’t very many musclemen that can not look ridiculous in a suit or a nice shirt, but The Rock pulls it off with class. He’s like George Clooney crossed with He-Man.

Anyway, that’s not important, and neither is this movie. Of course I like the message, and it’s always moving to see two rival gangbangers working together and becoming bros. It’s just like that part in INDEPENDENCE DAY where the Israelis and Palestinians work together to fight the aliens, except not stupid. But the one and only unique ingredient in this movie is The Rock. And it proves that The Rock is a winner.

You can do it, The Rock. I believe in you. You’re good in crappy action movies, as the hero or the villain. You’re good at comedy, like that role in BE COOL. Now you’re good in a serious drama that means something to you personally. I think you’ve gone through the 36 chambers of Shaolin now, you’ve proven your skills. Now it’s time to live up to your potential. It’s time to start making truly good movies. Even great ones. Go the George Clooney route, figure you have enough money and now only do roles you really believe in. Some of them should be action movies though, because you’re good at that. Just make sure they’re topnotch.

When you die, do you want people to say, “THE RUNDOWN was surprisingly good, he was great in it, although I hate Sean William Scott”? Or do you want them to list off their ten favorites from the long line of classics you did?

You can do it Dwayne. Believe in yourself and knock us on our asses.

[ratings]

Well it’s a low down shame we didn’t get to see that but otherwise XXX2 (which ended up being made with Ice Cube instead of Diesel and Lee Tamahori instead of Cohen) is more fun than the first one in almost every way. I’m not saying it’s a good action movie or even a great bad movie, but as an honest individual who tells it like it is I gotta cop to enjoying the fuckin thing.

It’s almost like they read my mind, or at least my review of the first one. They dumped the whole “action sports” angle completely and even make a joke or two about it. They got less of the standard action (skiing, motorcycles) and more of the over-the-top (flying boats, cars, tanks, trains, etc.). They made it more American – no fuckin dreary, snowy european villas, no boring greasy haired euro-trash villains, no shitty German heavy metal music. This one’s in Washington DC and the villain is Willem Dafoe as the secretary of defense. In my review of the first one I pointed out that the NSA has a “break a few eggs to make an omelette” philosophy while Vin Diesel’s was “never leave a man behind.” This time they shifted it so that the good guys are the people within the government who want peace and getting along and saving innocent lives, the bad guys are the warmongers who don’t mind killing people to get their way. Ice Cube’s character is tied to Sam Jackson’s big cheese Augustus Gibbons with an Above-the-Lawian backstory where Dafoe was their general who was burning down civilian homes, and they were the guys who went in and tried to save the civilians.

One positive I didn’t ask for in my review: there’s way more Sam Jackson in this one.

Most importantly though, Ice Cube’s character Darrius Stone is more like a genuine anti-establishment hero, not some corny skateboarding sellout in a fur coat like Vin Deisel’s Xander Cage. “The new XXX” as they actually call him in the movie starts out in a military prison. For a minute I wondered if he was the same character he played in Three Kings. Then I figured out he was sort of like, what if Ice Cube from NWA – never shoulda been let out the penitentiary – what if he went straight outta compton and into the Navy SEALS, an experience that turned him into a Seagalian one-man-army-with-a-conscious. In fact, during the standard Just How Badass Is This Guy scene (you know, the scene where a bunch of authority figures stand around in a room with computer screens talking about the hero’s incredible training and accomplishments), one of the old photos we see is NWA Ice Cube with his jheri curls and Raiders hat.

Cube’s not Doughboy here, he’s in better shape than you’ve ever seen him, and looks semi-believable fighting, jumping, climbing, swimming, driving and rapelling. He has three different inventor/equipper types on his team: his hot ex-girlfriend (high end souped up sports cars), his buddy Xzibit (quit Pimp My Ride to run chop shop, jacks tanks for him) and “College boy” (wacky white dude in sweater vest from the first movie, shows Cube fanciful inventions that he never bothers to use).

The bad guys are apparently killing off NSA agents as preparation for a coup. They use high tech equipment (including the military equivalent of the Phantasm flying disc) to attack Gibbons’s secret underground lair, which now includes a big “XxX” logo on the wall. I wonder if that was Xander Cage’s idea. “Hey guys, why don’t you make a giant sign out of my tattoo?” Gibbons has to make his escape in a badass car and goes underground – he actually has to bust Cube out of the joint, and has another fed with the triple-x-ian name of Kyle Steele after him (don’t worry, you know he’s on the up and up because he’s the guy who played Ben on Felicity).

Please note the character who turns out to be evil, then the next time you see her she’s wearing low cut black leather. Cat’s out of the bag, might as well put on the evil leather.

Now, if there is somebody out there who really enjoys the first movie, I’m not sure they would agree with me that this one is better. I mean you could make a legitimate argument that it’s not as good because without the whole snowboarding/videotaping/energy drink/Playstation gimmick it’s not quite as retarded. There is nothing as hilariously ridiculous as Xander Cage’s little speech about censoring rap music and video games. But I think as a whole it’s far more entertaining. Part 1 has alot of good laughs during the first third or so, but the second two thirds is mostly lifeless James Bond retread. Part 2 gets bogged down for a section of exposition/set up before the big finale, but the other three fourths held my attention. Good job, other three fourths. Especially the part where he was driving a car with no tires 160 mph on train tracks.

Also you gotta look at the subtext. For part 1, Vin Diesel was a rebel and underground folk hero or whatever, but the government tamed him, made him their bitch and left him laying on a fuckin beach working on his tan. The subtext was that the Man was right, the counterculture was wrong, and he might as well cash in, get paid and get laid. Thanks alot for that important message, Rob Cohen. For part 2, it’s a little better. This time the XXX agency is for people who love their country but not everything it does. Okay, so it’s kind of hard to take a movie right now where the president is a good guy, but the reason he’s a good guy is because he’s unveiling a new foreign policy that is the opposite of what we’re doing now. Vin Diesel’s mission was just the usual saving the world, Cube’s was more like saving our republic. And in the end, the credit goes to the cops and the white guy, and Cube drives off to an unknown future, leaving the Man and his woman behind.

There’s a scene where the heroes are all on top of a tank, driving toward a big action setpiece. And the song on the soundtrack is some shitty white rock band shitting all over that song “Fight the Power” by Public Enemy. In a sense this is symbolic of the whole movie: a little piece of genuine raging against the machine that’s been watered down and amped up and turned into a big dumb collage of daring jumps and fiery explosions. In fact, somebody pointed out to me that the guitar player from Rage Against the Machine is on the credits for “additional guitar.” Add him to Ice Cube and Public Enemy (who do a new song on the end credits) and you got three countercultural icons of the late ’80s/early ’90s, all working on a sequel to a Rob Cohen movie. That’s pretty sad when you look at it that way. But the glass is half full too. At least they managed to get an anti-war song playing in every multiplex in america for a couple weeks, the phrase “grand theft oil” ringing through the heads of the kids that have to clean up all the popcorn and shit.

* * *

Maybe you’re wondering what happened to Xander Cage. Not because he’s a memorable character or anything, but you’re just curious how they explained changing leads. All they say is that he was killed in Tora Bora. To get the details you gotta see the special edition DVD of XXX, which includes a really ridiculous 4 minute short called “The Final Chapter: The Death of Xander Cage.” It stars Vin Diesel’s stunt double, who you only see from the back or below the chin, and he only has one line, recycled from the movie. Funny thing is, even though it’s his stunt double, he never does any stunts. Asia Argento’s character, now played by some porn actress, gets kidnapped by a SWAT team. (No mention of this in the sequel.) Then Xander goes into a building that immediately blows up. His fur coat flies out the window, then something else… a sizzling pile of ears and skin from the back of his head, including the XXX tattoo, perfectly intact! Then some guy comes and picks up the skin pile, now on fire, and makes a quip. The identity of the killer seems to be important, but I didn’t recognize him from either part 1 or part 2. I guess that one’s for someone who gives a shit to figure out.

The end of part 2 sets you up for another new lead if there’s ever a part 3. The idea now is that Augustus Gibbons ties the movies together, and each time he hires a new and more outrageous anti-James-Bond. Obviously they’ll go for a girl next time, that’ll knock our socks off. But here are some other suggestions on directions they could go for an outrageous XXX #3:

1. This time, XXX is an old guy! I was thinkin Clint but somebody suggested Kris Kristofferson, and that idea can’t be topped. He’s always muttering about I can’t believe they’re makin me do this shit and that kind of thing. And he’s got the tattoo on the back of his neck. Bill Cosby would also work.
2. Danny Trejo. He plays ex-cons all the time, good guys occasionally, but never the leading man. It would be EXTREME!
3. some albino dude might be cool
4. That Chinese basketball player that’s like 8 or 9 feet tall. No subtitles.
5. Mr. T
6. John McClane
7. the other members of NWA besides Ice Cube
8. If he plays his cards right, Michael Jackson. Let’s say he’s found innocent in his trial. In the movie, he’s in prison, so we get to see what that would look like. Then they bust him out, and he works all kinds of dancing and shit into his fights. They make him a special boomerang hat weapon. This could be fuckin unreal. This is probaly the best idea there is.
9. Olympian XXX. All the stunts are like lifting weights and throwing spears and crap. And pole vaulting.
10. XXX in a wheelchair, but he still does awesome stunts like jumping off a bridge and crap, and his chair has all kinds of weapons and parachutes built in. He has real muscular arms from rolling around all the time, and maybe prosthetic legs with guns and bombs built in. Then at the end they give him robotic legs so he can run around.
11. all of the above, working as an ensemble

[ratings]