Bad Lieutenant (1992)

Bad Lieutenant: Directed by Abel Ferrara. With Harvey Keitel, Brian McElroy, Frank Acciarito, Peggy Gormley. While investigating a young nun’s rape, a corrupt New York City police detective, with a serious drug and gambling addiction, tries to change his ways and find forgiveness and redemption.

“Abel Ferrara has on his hands a small masterwork of one manu0026#39;s existence in the doldrums, and he has such a way of dealing with u0026quot;the streetsu0026quot; as a perpetually gritty, hellish world in a movie that I didnu0026#39;t disbelieve it for a second. In a sense he can be compared to the likes of Scorsese, however he certainly works in a different frame of honesty in mind in depicting his lead character and those he encounters. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAt the core of this extremely well made, unconventional film is the best performance Harvey Keitel delivered in the nineties, a bravado piece of work in which he bares all of the qualities that can make up the badness in the lieutenant. The Lieutenant spends little time with his kids, and when he does is hardly happy, and when he leaves them he goes into the underworld to do coke, crack and heroin, gulps down alcohol like Evian, and tries to cling onto whatever dignity he has left in betting on the Mets in the championship series. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eWhen a startling case occurs – a nun is raped by two street kids – the lieutenant is on the scene, however fogged in his muck, and canu0026#39;t understand how somebody, even a nun, can forgive such a crime. This leads into the third act of the film, and this is where the work propels itself into a higher ground, mature, spiritual, and ultimately fascinating in every aspect. Overall, Bad Lieutenant is a lean, un-abashed first-person singular in a rather sophisticated delivery. We are delivered a character, like Alex in Clockwork Orange for example, who is not even a half-way decent person. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eBut just by the way Ferrara and Keitel bring us into his world, and the details of his existence, a viewer can start to understand that the film works on other levels besides those of a conventional u0026quot;all around bad-copu0026quot; story.”