Caught this On Demand last night. I think most people are familiar with one or the other Bad Lieutenant, the most recent one (Port of Call New Orleans) having been directed by Werner Herzog. This one was directed by Abel Ferrara.

I'll try to avoid compare and contrast here. While both are good films, they're near polar opposites in almost every facet. However I think there're a handful of instances in which putting the two films side by side has merit.

Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant stars Harvey Keitel in the unnamed title role. He's a bad lieutenant, through and through. His addictions hit a square root: sex, drugs, booze and gambling. He's got no friends. Only junkies and prostitutes. The force don't think much of him and he's the bane of his bookie's existence. On top of it all, he's got a short temper and quick to pull out his revolver to settle a situation.

I wasn't a fan of Ferrara's Driller Killer but he did manage to pack that film full of sleaze and filth. He attempted to exercise some artistic flair but Driller Killer being so shallow a film, it amounted to little more than eye candy fluff.

Bad Lieutenant is much more successful. Visually speaking, there's much more emphasis on filth than on art, save for select standout moments of very effective, refreshing and pertinent surrealism. The scenes of drug use are little in such a downright grimy way, occasionally bathed in piss yellow or Taxi Driver burgundy, and just the nature of the drug use makes everything look downright nasty. But it works. It creates a world and the film has a point. It's all justified. Driller Killer was just dull exploitation with a little creativity.

But the fact is a lot of the filth doesn't come from the artifice. The film is actually pretty minimalistic in that department. I think part of it is the fact that the film stock looks so gritty, even for '92.

Most of the filth comes from the story, which brings me to the centerpiece of it all. The case. And boy, is this one grisly. A nun is raped on the altar of a Catholic church which is thereafter defiled by the rapists. There's a hospital scene that describes the details of the rape, which make it even more horrific than it already is. The briefness of the scene and the cold, clinical language prevent it from being exploitative.

There's a pretty hefty reward for whoever can track down the perpetrators which, of course, is to great interest to our bad lieutenant who is up to his ears in gambling debts. However given the intense spiritual nature of the crime and the surprising yet somehow not so surprising reaction from the rape victim, his perspective starts to take a detour.

...which brings me to the key difference between Ferrara's and Herzog's films. Ferrara's is about something. While both lieutenants are "bad," seemingly just to be bad, Ferrara's has got a couple things boiling inside of him and they all come out at the end of the film. The religious iconography also broadens the thematic horizons quite a bit. All this makes for a much deeper, darker film with a complete, well-conceived and appropriate payoff. Herzog's film is a lot more fun and relishes playing with the concept of "badness"... and that's okay. I liked both films.

But I did like this one better, if only for the sake that Keitel's a much better actor than Cage. He gives it his all in this one. I mean it's not hard to buy Keitel as a nasty, short tempered bastard but when he falls apart, it's all the more intense because his outer shell is so hardened.

The tone of Ferarra's is also much more to my tastes and I just think the film had a lot more going for it overall.

Fans of Herzog's film should check this one out, if only to compare and contrast.