Bad Lieutenant (Ferrara, 1992): Nickel Cinema, 6pm & 8.30pm
This film is being screened at the new Nickel Cinema. Full listings here.
Time Out review:
Harvey Keitel is the depraved and corrupt New York cop of the title. Hooked on
crack, heroin and alcohol, he's up to his eyeballs in debt and staking
his life on the Dodgers - and they're starting to lose. Perversely, the
appalling rape of a nun proffers salvation: a $50,000 reward to find the
perpetrator. The film isn't so much a thriller as a slice of (low-)
life. The script is cut to the bone, the set-ups have a vérité feel,
while the editing mimics real time in long, nearly unwatchable
sequences in which Keitel shoots up, or masturbates before two teenage
girls. Abel Ferrara allows his star to dictate the pace, and is rewarded with
a performance of extraordinary, terrifying honesty. This is an actor
laying himself bare before the camera/confessor. Astonishingly, Ferrara
ups the ante. Out of degradation, he pulls redemption. It is a jarring
stroke, and will divide audiences who have stayed with the film this
far. It seems to me that Ferrara is an artist of the profane; his
Catholicism looks suspiciously like a Scorsese hand-me-down. In this
exploitation/art movie, it may just be that the truth is in the sleaze.
Tom Charity
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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