Werner Herzog has released two films in the same year and I'm not sure which of the movies was made first. One is about a corrupt police officer while the other is about an insane murderer.
The Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call - New Orleans (2009)
I had been waiting to see this for so long and at the start I wasn't sure whether it was going to meet expectations. It had that feeling like one thing was happening after another. The presence of Val Kilmer was a bit concerning too. However, it turned out that Val Kilmer had a relatively minor part and also, in spite of appearances, this film actually has quite a few comic elements. (Anyone who has seen "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" will undoubtedly have laughed quite a bit at Kilmer's expert comic talents. He's also pretty good as a major source of comic relief in "Willow".)
In the featurette, Herzog claims that while people will laugh it will be an uncomfortable laugh. He's quite right, but it's not like in some dark comedies where you aren't sure whether you should laugh, but rather it's a whole-hearted guilty pleasure. You fully recognise that things are getting outrageous and you can't help but laugh at it. (This isn't like in "Julia" where you know you really shouldn't be laughing, but it's so horrible you feel you need to otherwise you'd have to cry.)
Of course, the main star of the movie is Nicolas Cage who isn't always great (though I actually really liked him in "Lord Of War" and I know of few people who didn't love "Adaptation"), but Werner Herzog knew what he was doing when he cast Cage for this role. Nicolas Cage's character descends further and further over the course of the movie into both corruption and drugs. (He damages his back quite early on, so ordinary drugs tests would have been explained away as being related to his medication.) The drugged-up state is indicated by the regular appearance of iguanas.
So yes, a hilariously darkly comic noir movie (set mainly in the day) with iguanas. Ooooh... and Eva Mendes. She plays a prostitute and the main love interest. She does a great job in the role of setting herself up as very much a three dimensional character and both she and Nicolas have great chemistry. The only other decent movie I've seen Eva Mendes in was "Once Upon A Time In Mexico" (alongside Johnny Depp) and she didn't really get as much chance to shine in that role. Here she really does a great, yet understated performance. (She also has great sex tape :p) Bad Lieutenant is just generally great fun. Don't miss this one!
5/5
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? (2009)
I'd been told that this film was quite odd and experimental, so I must say that I didn't really find it so odd. What it did was to portray a very odd character. One thing which was very odd about this movie was the choice in background music for many of the scenes, which I presume was intended to give us an impression of the mental states lurking within the main character. However, instead I found this rather annoying.
I think it was probably a big mistake to make the murderer, played by Michael Shannon, into the main character. Certainly we see the police interviewing both a friend of the murderer, played by Udo Kier, and the fiancee of the murderer, played by Chloë Sevigny. However, neither of these figures is really the central character and neither is the police officer interviewing them, played by Willem Dafoe. In the end, the main way we are supposed to get to know this character is through his own actions. In the end though, I just got the impression that the guy was stark raving mad.
There were some hints of a message to the movie. Of something that we were supposed to understand about the central murderer character. However, in the end it all felt far too superficial. When Herzog did a documentary on Timothy Treadwell, we had to be guided towards a deeper understanding of his strange delusions. In this movie they are hinted at, but Herzog doesn't seem at all sure what they say about the central figure. Shannon's murderer character is fixated on a Greek play about a man murdering his mother, but then again he also thinks that God is the "Quaker Oats" guy.
We could probably have done with a bit more focus on the murderer's fiancee. I did not have the slightest clue why she would decide to stay with someone this bonkers. Udo Kier's character is able to explain very clearly that he saw that the murderer had theatrical talent so, as a theatre director, we can see how he would come to look fondly on him. Sevigny's character seems wholly frustrated by her relationship and also frustrated with the emotionally troubled mother.
There's an interesting shot where Shannon's murderer character is convinced that the world is slowing down and the people around them are actually shown to move in slow motion for a moment. Then there are less interesting shots where Shannon's murderer character and a relative of his, played by Brad Dourif, stare into the camera with a dwarf in a suit standing imbetween them. So yeah, some scenes are a little weird. What's more annoying however is that none of these scenes are so exciting as those found in The Bad Lieutenant.
While I'd love to blame Lynch for the problems with this movie, I understand that his actual involvement was pretty limited. In the end this is just a rather poorly judged movie. It's not ridiculously bizarre by any means, but I don't think it does a great job of getting us into the mind of the central murderer character, which is clearly what it was intended to do. Some might find this more entertaining than I did, so your mileage may vary. Don't expect a typical Herzog masterpiece though. It really isn't.
3/5