Bad Lieutenant ~ ? Nope...just Bad Movie

Scorsese, probably. Tarantino, definitely not...since this film was released in 1990.
But yeah, I pretty much agree with everything you said. This movie is nothing but a dark, gritty, hard edged, nearly pointless story.
Maybe a vague lesson in forgiveness at the end, but nothing else.

Keitel did a great job playing a really sleezy cop...but that's about all you get, an hour and a half of watching a few days in the life of a sleezy cop.

Not a terrible film, but just a real time waster. Because of Keitel I also rated it at 4/10. But I could easily have rated it at a 3/10.

Scorsese disagrees with you both, having put it in his top ten of the '90s.

ce n'est pas une image juste, c'est juste une image

I'm not sure why you think this didn't have a decent story. It was an amazing character study of a man in despair with strong religious overtones of redemption and forgiveness. I do think it's fair to say it is Scorsese like, as in Taxi driver, which was also a character study with it's own overtones, but not that it failed.

To look at this you should separate tragedy from catastrophe(I've read this analysis elsewhere, so if it's famous and I'm using the wrong terms you must understand as I can't find where it came from). Tragedy is something sad but is inevitable based on the character's actions, such as Shakespeare. A catastrophe is inflicted upon the character through no fault of their own. In this sense bad lieutenant is very much a tragedy, and not just a repetition of crime for the sake of viewing crime. We see this man at the bottom state of his life; a perpetual downfall based on increasingly reactionary activity. This is also, in my opinion, one of the most actuate depictions of (heavy) drug addiction.

The end result, as you know, is bewilderment by the christian forgiveness of the nun against his (again) reactionary hate, resulting in a rediscovery of religion. At the end he had money. I don't know how much, but still he had money to give to the bookie. He could have stopped his tragedy(because, of course, his bad fate was always "in his own hands" to a degree), but it was his renewed since of Christianity that caused his (previously) inevitable fate. Of course, this sacrifice itself is naturally controversial to even the audience, who, I think, would generally agree with the lieutenants original reactionary hate. This, in my opinion, brings into question our own sense of morality, and especially for Christians, how willing we are to accept what are very common themes in the religion.

You mention that he's not bad; he's rotten. I think a dismissal like this undermines the entire foundation of the movie. We can agree he was bad, but he was human. He got lost and trapped in his own ability to exercise free will. This is why your Scorsese comparison makes more sense, as his movies are general more human (I'm thinking taxi driver), than Tarantino. Tarantino's characters are necessarily simplistic (in general), removing any real understanding on immorality and what we are willing to claim as immoral based upon the context of the character's life.

I hope this will maybe help you appreciate the movie more. I myself think it's phenomenal.

"He´s just plain ROTTEN".

In a sense, sure. I don´t get, however, why is he often described as this very ultimate when it comes to "bad" cops - the history of cinema, not to mention real life, is full of police officers who engage in far worse acts than Ferrara´s hero does here. Throughout the film he did nothing that could be described as outright, unambiguously EVIL, like murder or beat suspects within an inch of their lives.



"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

3 out of 10 from me, but I have a question. I have never used any drugs except being drunk a few times. Is love to drugs needed to like this kind of movies? I loathed "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" too which in my opinion was another 3/10 movie. I am not a christian and usually do not have a problem with violence, but still gave "The Passion of the Christ" 2/10 and Godfather was a bore 4/10 and Star Wars didn't feel right either - 5/10.

On the other hand I still love many of films that other people enjoy. Feel free to browse my voting list if you want to

'You can't HANDLE the truth!'

Sorry courtenayguy, apparently you can't either !

Not acquainted with Ferrara enough to make any claim about who he wanted to imitate but his competent direction here (even, with the overtly bleak story and the somewhat cliched redemption ending) does kinda make that all talk irrelevant, seeing that he did not fail in whatever he set out to do with this picture, at least. Wouldn't call it perfect myself but it certainly ain't a waste of time.

Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose.