Classic Movie Review: 'Bad Lieutenant'

Abel Ferrara is one of the most daring, fascinating, and unique voices in film. Though he’s made his fair share of duds in his nearly 50 years behind the camera, he’s also made some truly iconic movies. Ms. 45 was a recent revelation for me, a film about Me Too decades before Me Too became a movement demanding change in the way women are treated by men in our American society. Ms. 45 is, for me, a true classic but for most it is not a movie they’ve even heard of, let alone experienced.

No, if you’ve encountered the work of Abel Ferrara you are far more likely to have encountered his Bad Lieutenant starring Harvey Keitel. Bad Lieutenant burned through the indie film scene in 1992 on its way to two Indie Spirit nominations for the film and Ferrara’s direction and a win for Harvey Keitel’s searing, inimitable performance as a soul sick detective hammering his way through rock bottom to a place even darker, emptier and rockier than rock bottom.

In Bad Lieutenant Harvey Keitel stars as an unnamed Detective Lieutenant for the New York City Police Department. LT, as he’s referred to on IMDB, is quickly revealed to be a hot-tempered, drug and gambling addicted shell of a man. Though early on in Bad Lieutenant he carries himself with the cocksure attitude of a powerful man with the world at his fingertips, the cracks begin to show quickly.

LT is continuously leveraging himself with the mob deeply over a bet on a baseball playoff series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Mets. The call of these fictional baseball games with the familiar names of 1990’s baseball stars such as Darryl Strawberry and Orel Hershiser, is the only soundtrack for most of Bad Lieutenant and the failures of the Dodgers to finish their series against the trailing Mets becomes a genuine part of the growing angst and dread that permeates Bad Lieutenant.

From here we are riding shotgun as the LT goes about his soul sick journey to the bottom. He uses crack cocaine, has meaningless sex and violates the very basic humanity of a pair of innocent girls in a scene of shocking intensity and triggering sexual horror. There is nothing in the scene that you could call pornographic, per se, rather, it’s a transgression of basic decency that plays out in your mind as you watch in horror over the actions of LT.

Keitel makes joy look like indescribable pain and agony in Bad Lieutenant. I mentioned the empty sexual encounter. Early on in Bad Lieutenant, LT visits a pair of women and carries out a threesome that can best be described as devoid of pleasure. LT has reached a point in his excess where nothing can bring him pleasure anymore and we watch in awe as he comes to the realization that no sex, drug, or financial gain can move him anymore. He has indulged so endlessly as to render all joy as emptiness.

The plot, such as it is, in Bad Lieutenant kicks in when LT arrives at the scene of a horrific crime. A nun has been raped inside of a church. Her body has been violated in ways I won’t linger on here and the perpetrators have stolen sacred items from the church. LT isn’t the frontline detective on the case but he takes an interest in it nonetheless. When he learns that the Nun is refusing to help police catch the perpetrators, she knows who they are, it becomes his mission to get her to admit it to him.

LT is then brought to his knees and shaken to his core when the Nun reveals that she’s forgiven her attackers. This leads to a scene inside the church that is one of the most raw, vulnerable and soul shaking moments I’ve ever seen one actor deliver. Harvey Keitel sobs, weeps, and writhes in wretched emotional angst as he comprehends what the Nun has done. She has offered forgiveness for a heinous, unforgivable act and he can’t comprehend it.

Ferrara uses Keitel’s demonstration of soul shaking emotion as a deconstruction of masculine identity. Keitel is vulnerable here in ways that men like him battle their whole lives to avoid. Society isn’t supposed to allow men this level of emotional display and Ferrara captures it all in cringe inducing, queasy and powerful fashion. Wracked with sobs, crawling on the floor, LT finds Jesus nearby and kisses his feet. Catholic guilt is a particular fascination for Ferrara and few directors have brought home the torturous pain of Catholic guilt as Ferrara captures it here.

Bad Lieutenant was the classic on the June 28th edition of the Everyone’s a Critic Movie Review Podcast. Listen to it here.