MovieChat Forums > The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (2009) Discussion > Ending explained - SPOILER ALERT - with ...

Ending explained - SPOILER ALERT - with wardrobe and props

posted 15 years ago by pultzat
18 replies | jump to latest

- SPOILER ALERT - There's been a lot of discussion concerning the ending of the film - is it a "dream" just before he dies, or is it actually his life one year later? If you watch closely the props and clothing add more support for the dream/overdose scenario. When Cage does the heroine (in a large ziplock bag) at his fathers house, he's wearing a specific tan suit and striped tie. When we see him "One Year Later" in the second to last shot in the hotel room getting high when Ramirez walks in, he's using the same enormous sack of heroine and wearing the exact same suit/tie combination! Since directors generally don't overlook things like this, and combined with the fantasy that every single bad thing his his life ends up wonderful and then some, it's pretty clear that it's not literally his life one year later.

[–] raimund-berger 15 years ago

Wow, how moronic exactly will this get? He's wearing the same tan suit and striped tie 90% of the time. That's like saying "well he walked in shoes that evening and did the same at the end so that must mean it's not literally one year later".

And that's also why they included a subtitle saying "one year later" too, because they didn't mean that at all. Makes perfect sense.

Dear me, how desperate are you people that you come up with such a crap.

[–] hotinvegas2000 15 years ago

well 90 % of the movie he hasn't gone to bed. Over the course of the movie he sleeps a matter of hours so that's why he doesn't change his outfit. He is seen shaving in multiple scenes in situations where you normally wouldn't see someone doing such a thing. I think this costume idea totally has merit.

[–] raimund-berger 15 years ago

Congratulations. You didn't get any of both, neither his (pseudo) logic nor my rebuttal.

[–] pultzat 15 years ago

I suppose it's more logical that he arrives at work to have all three of his "enemies" come in and tell him everything is great in rapid fire succession - then one year later his father has completely sobered up, his father's wife is completely cleaned up, his girlfriend is clean and and expecting their first child, they have a nice home together, and the person he saved (that indirectly caused him to become an addict) walks into his hotel room to announce he's been clean for a year. I was just posting my observations based on what I saw with the costumes and props in the movie. If you think it's pseudo-logic, fine. I'll enjoy seeing your pseudo-civilized posts in the future.

[–] raimund-berger 15 years ago

Way more logical than your confused tan suits and striped ties blabber, that's for sure. Go whine somewhere else.

[–] mizwright 15 years ago

Dudes, I was too bored to continue watching.

[–] raimund-berger 15 years ago

Dude, I don't believe anybody cares.

[–] NoArrow 15 years ago

How is his boss one of his "enemies"? Everyone who champions this theory twists what happens in the movie.

I've learned that every rooster has his Spain, that it's located under his feathers.

[–] morganseer 15 years ago

Actually, you may have a point there, in spite of the nasty response you got. I can totally see it as a drug-induced hallucination/fantasy. Especially since a different color filter was used to differentiate that sequence.

[–] eliafrancescon 15 years ago

I don't think that the end was a dream, just because the movie it is intended to be a metaphor ( which, by all means, does not necessarily be likely or realistic); so, being a metaphor it is no surprise that the story is intended to "end well", and that is exactly because everybody watching the movie was just anxiously waiting to see how (and because of which one of the situations he'd put himself into) he would go down.
Just when you think he's going to go down, that everything is going to collapse, he comes back up (for a series of lucky, nasty, unlikely events) and everything magically fixes itself. That is not a dream, that is herzog's grand finale, the thing you don't expect, that makes this movie so great. From the beginning every scene put Cage in a position worse than the scene before, it just keeps getting worse and worse, but then, at the end, everything gets better. The end is "real", it's part of the story (and its "reality" is key to the plot), it's not a dream, and has no reason to be. If you think so, I believe you did not understand the message and the essential meaning of the metaphor, which is "life is hell and hell is the place where the bad guys win".

[–] solidoxx 14 years ago

Ok, so what was that last bit after all? Was that a dream?

[–] 14 years ago

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[–] jpbreeze2002 15 years ago

If you don't agree with the OP, that's fine. There's no need to be an *beep* about it.

[–] hotinvegas2000 15 years ago

are you joking about that iguana bit, it's hard to tell sarcasm on the internet.

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] philpaiement 14 years ago

No hallucinations. This movie is about a twisted sense of morality.

As you'll notice while the lieutenant is "BAD" and abuses his power like no other, he continuously does things that wind up heading towards a greater good. You can clearly see this in the climax when Terrance's partner decidedly wants to shoot Big Fate and steal everything from him. Terrance stops him. This scene is the pinnacle of his dilemma. How bad is he really?

When he gets promoted to captain after all his crooked *beep* I think Terrance truly believes that he is evil. The twist is that even while he did all those bad things, he did in the end do a lot of good too.

Makes you wonder how effective real crooked cops are.

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] 15 years ago

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