How anyone, critics or users, could rate this film highly.
To me it was one weak plot thread (the murdered family) and cage randomly happening into scenes.
There was no reason for anything and no resolution.
I raised my eyebrows and asked "wtf?" multiple times throughout my viewing.
Maybe its a director trademark of nonsense but I'm not familiar w Herzog. IMO this isn't even so bad its good, its just bad.
I don't get it either. It's an ugly film.
Many plot points, like Cage's instantaneous transition from Vicodan (an opiate analgesic for moderate back pain) to cocaine (a stimulant), don't make sense other than to demonstrate "how far he has fallen."
Herzog is better than this.
This film is primarily an absurdist comedy. It isn't meant to be a thrilling police procedural. Nobody says it's unrealistic or makes no sense for Chevy Chase to put his dead aunt on the roof of his car so he can go to a theme park. Comedy can be absurd. Absurdity can even be the joke itself.
It's also directed by a European 'arthouse' filmmaker. So many of the paint-by-numbers aspects of American commercial movies will have been dispensed with. Why aren't we shown how and why Terry becomes addicted to cocaine? Because it doesn't matter. It's about addiction and corruption and you need spoon-feeding the exact scenario that lead to his cocaine addiction...?
I can understand someone not liking this film or not finding it funny. That's not a question of right and wrong. But almost every criticism I've seen on these boards stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what the film's supposed to be doing. I've seen three people saying Cage's performance is unrealistic and/or over the top. In an absurdist, surrealist comedy about a multi-drug addled policeman with a crack-whore girlfriend being pursued by cartoonish mobsters... the lead performance is too big? Now that's funny.
Crapy movie!!
shareCage randomly happening into scenes? Like, the scene is set, sh-t happens, and then suddenly - whoops! - there's Cage, looks around, does nothing, then leaves? That like? And what "plot threads" are we talking about here? When has Herzog EVER been interested in plots or made a plot oriented movie? This here being his idiosyncratic, off-the-wall interpretation of a Hollywood genre flick, equally interested in fishes, alligators and iguanas as it is in the crime story, which he proceeds to gloriously ride into the sunset of his own design, celebrating the random absurdity of it all and giving middle finger to all and any tedious conventions such as, yes, "resolution", among others. It's such an anarchic, liberating piece of film... but there'll always be a bunch of people who only take a bite of the familiar and only want more of the same. Well, whatever.
"facts are stupid things" Ronald Reagan