You know, if anyone but Werner Herzog were reteaming the chemistry-free Ghost Rider duo of Nic Cage and Eva Mendes, I’d just ignore it. But it is Werner Herzog, and it’s in his ‘reimagining’ of Bad Lieutenant, so I have to give it some ink. Or pixels. Whatever the term is in cyberspace.
Mendes is joining the project in an unknown role – hell, everything except the location (New Orleans) and most basic of conceits (Nic Cage is a bad lieutenant) is unknown at this point. While I think Mendes is smoking hot and would love to see her in a perverse, twisted movie (I imagine that’ll be the case, right? Why use the name Bad Lieutenant if you’re just making a procedural), I have to say that even with Herzog at the helm this pairing leaves me cold as Tim Russert.
This new version of Bad Lieutenant needs to have one piece of great casting announced in the coming days to right things. I love Herzog, but the man is far, far, far from infallible.