Bad Lieutenant Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

Bad Lieutenant Blu-ray Movie Review

Harvey Keitel is unforgettable in this disturbing film from Abel Ferrara.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 2, 2010

Is redemption possible for someone like Adolf Hitler? Isn’t it part and parcel of at least some branches of Christianity that if a sinner sincerely repents before his death all is forgiven and an entrance to heaven is assured? How does that philosophy sit with you? Does it make you slightly uneasy, thinking of sharing cloud space with the likes of the most evil man of the 20th century? Of course, someone like Hitler probably never repented to begin with, so the issue is moot, but the larger theological question remains and is at the center of Abel Ferrara’s gritty and disturbing drama Bad Lieutenant.

Harvey Keitel portrays the unnamed title character, a New York City cop who is spiraling out of control in a morass of various drug addictions, gambling fixations and sexual improprieties. This police lieutenant isn’t just bad, he’s toxic, and Keitel plays the character for all he’s worth, including some full frontal nudity and an odd proclivity for emitting completely alien sounding moaning noises as the character’s world closes in around him. When the lieutenant begins investigating the vicious rape of a nun (a plot point based on actual events, as is discussed in some of this Blu-ray’s bonus features), he finds himself confronted with his own demons and issues of personal responsibility and morality. Martin Scorcese is on record proclaiming Bad Lieutenant as one of the five best films of the 1990s. I don’t know if I’d go that far, but it presents Keitel in an absolutely unforgettable performance, for better or worse, a searing portrayal that is difficult at best to watch, but which lingers with the viewer long after the film has ended.

The bad lieutenant doing some "good s--t".

There’s an insider’s knowledge to the drug addled ethos of Bad Lieutenant, most likely coming from co-star and co-writer Zoë Lund, who suffered from heroin and cocaine addiction and actually died from her drug use in 1999. Lund had had a working relationship with director Abel Ferrara, and Ferrara’s initial idea for a black comedy revolving around a ne’er-do-well corrupt policeman slowly got morphed into a story also featuring the rape of the nun and Lund’s first hand experiences in the drug world of New York City.

Bad Lieutenant is indeed a patently odd assortment of plot machinations, and if it weren’t so outright disturbing, could actually evince some laughter from properly jaded audience members, especially when Keitel’s character continues betting on a (fictional) play off series between the New York Mets and the Los Angeles Dodgers even as his world devolves into madness. One of the first scenes shows Keitel’s character showing up at a horrifying shooting, where two women have been gunned down in their car. He takes a quick peek at the crime, and then immediately segues into a discussion over the odds in the upcoming series with a bunch of his police buddies. It’s an odd and disconcerting moment, the first in what proves to be a series of such dissociative sequences throughout the film.

It’s easy to dismiss a lot of Bad Lieutenant as second rate Scorcese or even Tarantino, until the unexpectedly eloquent entrance of the violated nun spins the film on its head and takes Bad Lieutenant on yet another whirwind ride down an unanticipated alleyway. Frankie Thorn’s quiet and assured performance in this role, coupled with some really thought provoking dialogue, instantly elevates this film’s intelligence quotient and gives disbelievers (no pun intended) a reason to think twice about Bad Lieutenant’s motives and means. With so much of this film mired in the muck of drug use, corrupt police, and just off the wall sexual denigration, the interludes with the nun are both a welcome, albeit disturbing, respite. Of course, Ferrara can’t help but inject a little perversion here as well, having Keitel’s lasciviously gaze at the naked woman in the emergency room after her attack.

A lot of Bad Lieutenant plays like the fevered dream of a drug addict, perfectly fitting within the context of the film. That means scenes like the nun’s attack are momentarily confusing, intercut with Keitel doing drugs, so that we’re not entirely sure if he’s hallucinating or watching a film or indeed witnessing a real event. Later, when Keitel does hallucinate, imagining a perforated Jesus standing mute in a church aisle, it’s a fascinating sequence, amped up to almost unimaginable emotional levels by Keitel’s desperate pleas that the icon respond to him.

It’s indeed difficult to just come out and heartily recommend a film like Bad Lieutenant. Do you really want to spend an hour and a half or so with a character this destitute, morally bankrupt and sexually perverse? Does Bad Lieutenant actually make a case for ultimate redemption? Personally I think the film is more than a bit ambiguous in that regard, but that again is perfectly in keeping with Keitel’s character’s own “doubting Thomas” approach toward faith, forgiveness and, indeed, redemption itself. Bad Lieutenant has at the very least the courage of its convictions to ask some very tough questions in an extremely discomfiting context. If it never gives any clear answers, maybe that’s because there aren’t any.

Bad Lieutenant Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bad Lieutenant was made on a relatively paltry budget, and it shows. Though the film here receives a solid enough AVC encoded 1080p transfer (in 1.78:1), there's only so much that can be done with these source elements. There's a soft, grainy quality to a lot of this film, with low contrast in the dimly lit shots which can blanch a lot of color from the image. In fact, while color is at least acceptable, it's nowhere near the saturation levels that a lot of Blu-ray lovers have come, rightly or wrongly, to expect from the bulk of releases. Daytime outdoor shots, or the occasional brightly lit interior scenes, fare best here, especially in close-ups which can reveal a wealth of detail a be acceptably sharp. Overall, though, this film almost has the look of a 1970s indie feature, intentionally fuzzy and grainy in that faux-verité style that was deliberately anti-Hollywood glitz and sheen. Taken on those terms, then, this Blu-ray certainly recreates the original film look quite well. It's just not a polished, pristine look by any means. There's also some pretty jagged telecine wobble throughout the opening credits and even into the first establishing shot outside Keitel's character's home. After that initial wobbliness, things settle down.

Bad Lieutenant Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Though we get a lossless audio mix here, there's probably rightly no attempt to tart up the original soundtrack with a fake sounding surround option, and so we're instead given a perfectly serviceable DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track. This is a resolutely front heavy mix in a film that's largely dialogue driven anyway, so there's little if any need for overt directionality. The film probably could have benefited (back in the day of its release) with a little multichannel separation at least in the ambient city scenes, but actually the claustrophobic, closeknit approach of this narrower soundfield helps to support the film's disturbing emotional tone. There's fairly good dynamic range here, especially when violence (as in the nun's attack) erupts unexpectedly from an otherwise quiet moment. Virtually no source music is utilized in Bad Lieutenant, but overall the balance between dialogue and ambient noise is natural sounding and quite effective.

Bad Lieutenant Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Two better than average extras are included on this Blu-ray, including an informative Commentary by Ferrara and his DP Ken Kelsch. Also on tap is a really good making of featurette called It All Happens Here (SD; 34:02), which covers everything from pre-production to the controversy which erupted after the film was released.

Bad Lieutenant Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Bad Lieutenant is a gut churning experience, so forewarned is forearmed. This is not a film for the easily offended or overly squeamish. Ferrara may seem on the surface to be just another expoitative director, but the surprising eloquence of the nun's subplot reveals a filmmaker who has a lot on his philosophical mind. Keitel delivers an astoundingly visceral performance here, and for that reason alone, Bad Lieutenant is recommended, at least for those who don't mind their dramas searingly provocative.