Nic Cage back on top in Herzog’s ‘Bad Lieutenant’

Harvey Keitel's fearless and uninhibited performance as the guilt-ridden New York cop in Abel Ferrera's 1992 Bad Lieutenant was always going to be a hard act to follow. But despite initial misgivings from Ferrera fans, a maniacal and mesmerising Nicolas Cage makes the role his own in Werner Herzog's post-Katrina remake.

Many are calling Cage's turn in the clunkily named Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans his best performance in years.

In the 1990s Nicolas Cage, the star of films as diverse as Peggy Sue Got Married, Wild at Heart and Con Air, was one of those rare Hollywood beasts - an Oscar-winning actor beloved by indie film buffs and action movie fans alike.

But the Noughties have seen his acting CV blotted by poor choices (Lord of War, The Weather Man, National Treasure) while his personal life has been blighted by the death of his father (Francis Ford Coppola's brother August) and very public disputes with both the IRS and his former financial adviser.

Meanwhile the once quirky star has become a figure of fun, mocked for his Bavarian castles and indulgent follies, the most recent being a nine-foot pyramid tomb.

Now, aged 46, he seems to be back on form. Buoyed by a well-received performance in Matthew Vaughn's inventive super-hero flick Kick-Ass earlier this year, Cage has possibly found his cinematic soulmate in the German arthouse auteur Werner Herzog.

Herzog, too, has been cast off in a celluloid wilderness of sorts himself in recent years - switching to documentary-making in the Nineties after losing his longtime muse, the unhinged but much-missed Klaus Kinski.

Bad Lieutenant throws Cage and Herzog together, two warped partners-in-crime working to create a tale of squalor and redemption.

Herzog's film, which also stars Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer and rapper Xzibit, is not a remake or sequel of Ferrera's original but a reinvention. The bad lieutenant of the title is Terence McDonagh, a rogue New Orleans cop who is set on a path of drug-addiction and moral corruption after he incurs a bad back from rescuing a prisoner from a flooded basement during Hurricane Katrina.

Where Harvey Keitel's Lieutenant wallowed in self-abasement and Catholic guilt, Cage's McDonagh is a jumped-up cocaine addict whose internal agonies are powerfully and sympathetically conveyed by his physical performance: a permanently slumped shoulder, clenched jaw and lined brow.

Somewhat mischievously, Herzog replaces the visions of Christ with drug-induced hallucinations of iguanas while the film finishes with a surprising, redemptive twist. Cage, it seems, has successfully confronted his demons and won.

With the exception of Variety's former reviewer Todd McCarthy, who called Bad Lieutenant "indifferently made and erratically acted", most serious critics feel the reboot has paid off.

WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING:Antonia Quirk, the Financial Times: "Herzog’s BL is terrific, full of queasy, crazy touches, like alligators creeping down the hard shoulder to spy on the aftermath of a traffic accident, and the "spirit" of a dead man in patent-leather shoes spinning on its head after a drugs-bust shoot-out. As always with Herzog, the more eccentric scenes have an eerie, hilarious mastery. And only someone with the metaphysical élan of Herzog could pull off a film noir that takes place mostly in fierce sunlight." (4/5 stars)

Xan Brooks, the Guardian: "Werner Herzog has made good movies and bad movies. But he is not a man to feel pinched by his material, or daunted by an illustrious predecessor. Here he takes Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant and makes it gloriously, shamelessly his own." (4/5 stars)

Adam Smith, Empire: "The move to New Orleans is a masterstroke, the perfect setting for McDonagh's downfall. The New Orleans Herzog channels seems to be in constant warfare with the swamp, the outcome of this battle undecided. It feels wet, humid - greenery seeping out of the cracks in its tasteful facade. Literal rot as well as figurative decay is everywhere."  (5/5 stars)

Tom Huddleston, Time Out: "In fusing European experimentalism and Hollywood boldness, Herzog has created a genuine oddity, a furious and unforgettable hybrid which may well prove to be 2010’s most purely enjoyable moviegoing experience." (5/5 stars)

Kevin Maher, the Times: "The plot is irrelevant. The resolution doesn’t matter. The fundamental pleasure of this film resides in watching Cage on screen. Doing something. Anything." (4/5 stars) ·