Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

When it was announced one of cinemas great iconoclasts, Werner Herzog, would be 're-imagining' the work of another by spinning Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant into something new, its fair to say that eyebrows, not to mention a few hackles, were raised. Yet Herzog is right to insist this is not a remake, and moving the action from New York to New Orleans is indicative of how far apart the films are from each other; from sleaze and Catholicism in The Big Apple to the devastation and lizards of The Big Easy. Nicolas Cage is Terence McDonagh, one of the few cops left in town after a post-Katrina exodus, which is enough to get him promoted. Crippled by a back injury he sustained during the hurricane, the prescription drugs do little to ease his pain, so he turns to the hard stuff, often having a snort with Frankie (Eva Mendes), a high class hooker he thinks he's protecting, though, more often than not, she ends up looking out for him. When McDonagh is put in charge of the investigation into the brutal murder of a family, his moral compass gets lost and his behaviour becomes ever more erratic. Is he out of his depth or out of his mind? Cage is on electrifying form here, putting in his most animated performance since he played Sailor Ripley in Wild at Heart, while the film's audacious humour is its trump card. Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant was truly daring and brilliant, but it would be hard to argue that it was ever this much fun.

Michael Hayden