In fact, the attempt to graft personal style onto genre films has been a successful example in 2006's "Revisiting the Sky". In "Revisiting the Sky", Herzog surpassed the concept of "jungle" in Vietnam War movies. The jungle is no longer just showing the cruelty of war while reflecting the absurd ideology of the setting props, but continues the "Aguirre, God" "The Wrath of "The heterogeneous nature that made Klaus Kinsky's mind crazy becomes a natural prison for the body and mind of the besieged person, echoing Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" remotely. Similarly, "Bad Lieutenant" basically ignores the plot routines centered on traditional detectives and cop film citations. Instead, it puts all its focus on the protagonist of "Bad Lieutenant" starring Cage. If you have read from "Aguirre" Going to the series of films in which Herzog and Klaus Kinsky cooperated in "Ark by Land", you will discover how similar the "bad lieutenant" here is to the crazy protagonists in it: they can achieve something A simple belief sacrifices everything. They ignore all external rules and at the same time create their own rules. This somewhat explains why Herzog is interested in the 1992 film of the same name by Abel Ferrara, which has become a classic film noir, and insists on remaking it.
However, the "bad lieutenant" in Herzog's movie also has beliefs and his own rules? certainly.
The story begins in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. In the prologue of the movie, Cage jumped into the cold water to rescue a drug addict who was trapped in a cell by the flood. For this reason, he was promoted to lieutenant. The spine is severely damaged, and medications are needed for the second half of life to resist the pain. The "bad lieutenant" didn't look bad at first. But soon, the audience witnessed the lieutenant's inferiority in Herzog's usual straightforward narrative. He took drugs and smuggled the confiscated drugs. His girlfriend was a drug-drug prostitute. He gave her the drugs that he had embezzled with his power like ordinary people buy gifts for his girlfriend. He doesn't seem to have the professional ethics of a policeman at all. The most shocking thing is that he caught a pair of young men and women who had just come out of the entertainment venue and confiscated the heroin from them. In exchange for not arresting them, he had sex with the girl on the street in front of the boy. The main line of the story is that a family of five illegal immigrants from Senegal was exterminated, and the "bad lieutenant" was responsible for investigating the case. His investigative methods are also appalling, including using guns to intimidate a pair of old ladies who are unwilling to cooperate, unplug the oxygen tube of one of the heart-failed old ladies, and throw them at the murderer’s gang leader "Big Fett" to provide They gave the opposing police's operational intelligence in exchange for the share of drugs, and finally falsified evidence to arrest Big Fett. Obviously, the behavior of the "bad lieutenant" far surpassed the bottom line of professional ethics set for the police in people's minds, and this is where he is "bad". At the same time, the audience had to admire that he is indeed a capable policeman, "there is no prisoner he can't catch". When he was isolated by a colleague due to being too arrogant, gambling and losing all of his income, and at the same time offending the underworld leader for his girlfriend, he owed a debt of 50,000 US dollars that must be paid off within two days, when he was temporarily suspended for abuse of power When police qualifications and guns were confiscated, the "bad lieutenant" seemed to be in desperation. However, he can always survive from desperation, cleverly dealing with different forces, and in the end, he has completed his duties, and he has turned himself into danger.
If the audience's morality is not too conservative, or if he can understand the characters from the film noir atmosphere, he will somewhat identify with this "bad lieutenant" and feel that he is not so "bad". Indeed, although the lieutenant in this movie is on the verge of morality, ethics, and society, he is really not a real villain. Of course, he is not a hero in the traditional genre of police movies. If he is abusing his power, he has abided by a policeman's bounden duty: catching criminals. What he completely ignores is the means. He is a person who is born and works against "procedural justice". Recalling the reports of the city of Orleans after Hurricane Katrina a few years ago, crime, black market, robbery, and murder, the media have described the city as a hell. In a hell-like city, in a world without God-if there is, why would he damage the spine of a man who has given himself up to save others? In addition to abiding by the rules set by himself, what is the outside world? The rules can be followed? In a world where everyone protects themselves and "all people war against all people", the "bad lieutenant" is its natural product. In addition to scrupulously abiding by the police's bounden duty of arresting prisoners, another belief that the "bad lieutenant" has won people's approval is that he has a silent warmth towards the already fragmented family. When he was in a state of discomfort, he still helped his father to take care of the dog. When he was packing his clothes, he would suddenly stop watching the photo taken with his father before. He would take his girlfriend back to the hut where he had a happy childhood, and remember that happily. Fantasy about pirates and treasures. In a moment of recollection, he spent the only happy time in adulthood. When he loses confidence in this world, he turns around and puts value and sustenance above the family again. This is in line with the character logic, but it is contrary to Herzog’s previous logic. This point may be due to his cooperation with Hollywood. Make a little compromise to the market afterwards!
"Herzog will always have free trade between reality and fantasy" Roger Albert once commented on Herzog. In "Bad Lieutenant", the most eye-catching fantasy is probably the crocodiles and lizards in the close-up shots, and of course the dead street dance show that appeared in the eyes of the "bad lieutenant" after taking drugs. Regardless of the latter, crocodiles and lizards seem almost inexplicable in the eyes of ordinary viewers. Also inexplicable is the question asked by the "bad lieutenant" at the end of the movie: "Do fish dream too?" I remember Herzog filmed a movie called "The Place Where Green Ants Start Dreaming", about a group of primitive people. The conflict with the modern company, because the place where the company digs for oil is the place where the green ants dream of their indigenous beliefs, and it is a sacred place. If you want to find the answer to the question of whether a fish dreams, you must think like a primitive man, and even see the world through the eyes of a lizard or a crocodile. This is a kind of "return to ancestors" in Herzo's format. In that lens that imitates the perspective of a lizard, the behavior of the "bad lieutenant" and others appear strange and ridiculous. The meaning under the "mirror" seems to be: don't toss it! How good to be a lizard!
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