Awesome movie. My intrepretation/review .

Bad Lieutenant is everything a dark indy character should be. Disturbing, bizzare and brilliant. Here's a film that doesn't mess around and is very clear in it's intentions and doesn't compromise on any level in its honest vision.

First things first, Harvey gives a performance that's brilliant, and when I say brilliant I mean, it's very humanistic and real. He made this film 4 stars in my opinion.

So essentially the film isn't anything too hard to grasp. We have a protagonist whose nameless, fiting because he's barely human. We don't need to know anything about his past struggles that lead to where he is now. It's all irrelevant. When the film begins, his life as we the audience, see it begins.

What we have is man who wants to die. He feels nothing. He is nothing. He feels so little that he can't even kill himself. He makes insanely impossible gambles, drinks and drives, and of course hits the crack the pipe. His use of coke is to just fill the cracks of emptyness he feels in his day to day life. He wants to die. His drug use is no longer for pleasure or escapsim, it's not even about being wasted, it's a second nature device he does without thinking about.

I love how everything is left to our imagination. He needs to destroy himself and devestate others in anyway he can to leave mark, some sort of way of being remembered. His gambling is his way of tight rope walking life, it may very well be the only way he can feel anything at all.

And why is he a cop? Clearly he does have some sort of sense of morality, he at least did at some point. We see with the tragic story of the nun, a case so disturbing, it somehow cracks his shell.

On one side he's got a life threatening debt and a solution to possibly even things out with money that's supplied to him through a connection. However he even FINDS the two men guilty of something so horrible it manages to have some impact on him. The scenes of him in the church in the final act are brilliant. His sacrifice might be the one pure thing he does. Some may feel otherwise, but it's an extremely controversial ending to what's such a rich film.

The acting chops of Harvey here are bone chilling. Two particular scenes early on in this film had me especially disturbed. Such effective film making is to be seen here. No supporting characters, no big intricate police investigation plots, no special effects, this is an ACTING movie. It's a one man, it's a one man freak show about morality, drugs, and faith, and frankly it was excellent.

Not enough films like this are made.