Hearing that Nicolas Cage is going to star in a remake of Bad Lieutenant almost made my blood boil, until I saw who is directing: Werner Herzog.
Mark my words, someone will die making this film.
Bad Lieutenant is, of course, the Abel Ferrara movie where we show Harvey Keitel how we suck a dick, and he in turn shows us his dick. And smokes crack. It’s a movie that’s a lot weirder than it often gets credit for (I think a lot of people have never seen it but just know all the Keitel Kock stuff), but it’s an Abel Ferrara movie, so big fucking surprise.
Nic Cage has allowed his career to turn into unmitigated shit in the last several years, and Bangkok Dangerous – the trailer for which drew hearty laughs when I saw it in front of Forbidden Kingdom – could well be his nadir. So it’s smart that he gets together with someone like Herzog, the maddest man in cinema, and makes something flat out edgy, the kind of shit that young Nic Cage thrived on. And if any director will get that fiery lunatic who ate a live roach out of the old, shitty Cage, it’s Herzog.
The only stumbling block is that the script is by William Finkelstein, who has a bunch of TV cop shows to his credit. One thing I didn’t walk away with from Ferrara’s movie was a sense of police procedural, so I don’t know if we need a guy who writes Law & Order on this remake. Still, it’s Herzog – I will give this motherfucker the eternal benefit of the doubt.
Start taking bets now: Who dies on set? Is it Cage, pushed to do something stupid and dangerous by his director? Is it Herzog, trying to one up Cage by doing something more stupid and dangerous? Or is it a crew member, killed when the relationship between actor and director takes on shades of Herzog’s battles with Klaus Kinski?