Director: Abel Ferrara
Screenplay: Zoe Lund and Abel Ferrara
Starring: Harvey Keitel, Victor Argo, Paul Calderón, Eddie Daniels, Bianca Hunter (credited as Bianca Bakija), Zoe Lund, Vincent Laresca, Frankie Thorn, Fernando Véléz, Joseph Micheal Cruz, Paul Hipp, Frank Adonis
Country: United States
Running Time: 97 min
Year: 1992
BBFC Certificate: 18
Cult film director Abel Ferrara is a one of a kind whose films are thought provoking and provocative in equal measure. Some of his best-known works include the video nasty Driller Killer, rape revenge thriller Ms .45, vampire film The Addiction, and neo-noir crime drama King of New York.
Another of his best-known and most critically acclaimed films is 1992’s Bad Lieutenant, which until now had languished on my ‘to watch’ list, without ever making it onto my TV screen. When the new 101 Films dual format 4K and Blu-ray release was announced, I knew it would be time to right that wrong and finally watch the film that may well be Ferrara’s masterpiece.
Bad Lieutenant follows an unnamed New York Police Department officer, known only as The Lieutenant (Harvey Keitel), who is utterly reprehensible and is surprisingly not in jail himself. He snorts cocaine and partakes in other drugs, gets drunk, steals from crime scenes, helps criminals, and gets increasingly in debt due to failed baseball game bets.
Parallel to some of these events, a nun is raped by two men and The Lieutenant vows to track them down and bring them to justice as he reaches a crossroads in his life and realises the error of his ways.
Bad Lieutenant gives us, at face value, a morally corrupt and disreputable central character, yet as the film progresses it becomes clear that this is a tale of redemption, or at least setting our protagonist on that path.
There’s a lot of controversial content in the film, from several scenes of drug use and strong and uncomfortable to watch sexual situations, to graphic violence. That’s to be expected from the provocateur Ferrara, if you’ve seen some of the other films I mentioned earlier.
But alongside this controversial content is a thought-provoking story anchored by a masterful central performance by Keitel. The early 1990s were stellar ones for the actor, who would appear in Quentin Tarantino’s debut Reservoir Dogs the same year as Bad Lieutenant, as well as Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise and Jane Campion’s The Piano, amongst others in the early part of the decade.
Keitel is a powerhouse throughout Ferrara’s film, eliciting a range of emotions from tough, crooked cop to devastated, emotional and broken as he realises he needs to redeem himself. The actor is in virtually every scene and anchors the film. Keitel is simply astonishing and the movie would be worth watching for his performance alone.
His character is the epitome of a corrupt cop who is on a downward spiral of drugs, criminal deals, casual sex and bad luck with his bets, before starting on his arc of redemption. The Lieutenant’s impulse to redeem himself comes against a vision of Jesus Christ, just one of a number of religious motifs that are peppered throughout the film and are strong drivers in the background of the narrative.
Amongst the supporting cast there isn’t a bad performance, but particular mention should go to some of the female actors who are particularly strong, including Frankie Thorn as the nun, whose rape is rightly and understandably incredibly difficult to watch and juxtaposed with images of Jesus Christ on a cross.
A key character in the film is not an actor but a location; New York City. The NYC of the early 1990s is vividly and evocatively shown, and it’s hard to imagine the story working in any other location. It’s a striking backdrop to the story that unfolds.
There are some phenomenal and powerful sequences in the film, mostly when Keitel’s The Lieutenant is baring his soul. These include him breaking down naked after sex in a famed scene, angry emotions boiling over when he loses a baseball game bet, his emotional realisation of the error of his ways in church, and the final moments of the film, which I shall not spoil.
The cinematography by Ken Kelsch is fabulous, capturing New York beautifully, and observing The Lieutenant in an almost documentary style throughout. The camerawork never judges our lead character, just watching him as he goes about his life and descends further into his own version of Dante’s Inferno.
One quick aside: director Werner Herzog would make Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, released in 2009 and loosely based on the 1992 Bad Lieutenant, though Herzog would say it was neither a sequel nor remake. The film starred Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer and Alvin ‘Xzibit’ Joiner.
But back to Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant. The controversial content won’t be for every one, but I found the film to be a masterpiece, probably the best by auteur Abel Ferrara, with a fantastic central performance by Harvey Keitel, and plenty of food for thought in a character study set against the evocative backdrop of New York City.
Film: 
Bad Lieutenant is available now from 101 Films on a three-disc limited edition dual format 4K UHD and Blu-ray as number 45 on the Black Label range. I watched the 4K disc, which contains the film and a commentary with Abel Ferrara and cinematographer Ken Kelsch, and the second Blu-ray which contains the rest of the extras. The first Blu-ray contains the film and commentary, like the 4K disc.
The 4K picture looks marvellous with a very natural feel, just the right amount of grain, clear colour balance and fine detail throughout. The audio is also great with dialogue, sound effects and music all sounding very crisp and clear.
Special features:-
Brand new extras:
Shooting in New York – Interview with Abel Ferrara
Ken & Abel – Interview with cinematographer Ken Kelsch
Bad Neighborhoods – The locations of Bad Lieutenant
Limited edition booklet includes Body of Evidence: How Harvey Keitel’s Bad Lieutenant Topped a Career of Fearless, Frank Performances by James Mottram, and Morality Crisis: The Vice and Virtues of Abel Ferrara by Rich Johnson
Archive extras:
It All Happens Here – The making of Bad Lieutenant
Audio commentary with Abel Ferrara and Ken Kelsch
Interview with Abel Ferrara
Original trailer
The archival commentary is great fun. Ferrara and Kelsch are wonderful to spend time with. They focus on the scenes as they plan out and share their recollections of the shoot, as well as some of the actors. They also talk about the look of the film, and comment on the look of the movie at the time the commentary was recorded. I wonder what they’d think of how it looks now. Hopefully they’d be very positive. There are moments of silence on occasion but the pair are talking for much of the runtime. A good listen.
Shooting in New York is a wonderful 26-minute interview with director Ferrara who talks about the context in which he made films, discusses the late screenwriter Zoe Lund and the script for Bad Lieutenant, how Keitel got the role, and touches on his other works like Ms .45. He also looks at some of the contentious content. It’s an excellent piece. Stay until after the end credits of the piece, filmed by Abel Ferrara, to hear an Easter egg from the interview.
It All Happens Here is an archival 34-minute documentary which runs through the pre-production period through to the release, including interviews with Ferrara, Kelsch and other members of the crew. It includes news footage of a horrific crime, a 1981 rape of a nun, which was the inspiration for one of the central scenes in the film. It covers the background to the film, touches again on the late Zoe Lund who also appears in the film as Zoe, whom The Lieutenant takes drugs with. Ferrara and Kelsch pay tribute to Lund, and cover the production and the legacy of the film. It’s a great documentary.
Ken & Abel is another strong interview, this time with cinematographer Ken Kelsch and running for 15 minutes. It covers a lot of ground in the runtime and is another solid inclusion.
There’s also an archival 11-minute interview with Ferrara, which seems to be unedited – it doesn’t get going until minute two. It’s a welcome inclusion but the commentary, newer interview with Ferrara and documentary prove to be far more insightful.
Completing the on-disc extras is a three-minute red band trailer, starting with a quote from John Milton’s Paradise Lost.
The booklet features two excellent essays, one about Ferrara and the other about Keitel. Both touch on elements of Bad Lieutenant but also place the film in the context of the careers of the director and actor.
Bad Neighborhoods features a 15-minute look at the locations of the film, showing what they look like now. I’m always a fan of such features, as I love seeing and visiting where films were made, and this is a great one. As well as seeing how the locations look now, I particularly enjoyed hearing about the location for the nightclub in the film, which had a real-life checkered history.
In closing, 101 Films have provided an outstanding package of extras, archival and new for Bad Lieutenant, which are very frank and honest about the making of a tremendous film. Picture and sound is great and the commentary, almost 90 minutes of video extras, and two fabulous essays in the booklet, give you a wealth of background and insight into Abel Ferrara’s masterpiece.
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