Review of Bad Lieutenant

Bad Lieutenant is essentially a character study of the darkest kind. Our subject is a white, male New York City police officer. He lives in a nice, outter city home, has a wife and grade-school aged children. This is not an overly-priviledged life, but it is obviously a comfortable one, the kind that generally require certain advantages to end up living. And yet this man is so bad. Shockingly, almost soulessly a bad person. We are not told why, and while this could be considered a weakness of the film, it actually makes it more haunting and thought-provoking. Harvey Keitel delivers a career performance, and his is a long and proficient career filled with strong performances. There is a palpable self-loathing behind his indecency, and a chilling self-awareness of just how abhorrent he has become...and yet he can not turn his life around. He is too far entrenched in his world of addiction and pain, one always promoting the other like a snake eating its own tail. Eventually he is faced with ideas of redemption, when he observes that a nun has the capacity to forgive the two men who raped her. If this despicable act is met with forgiveness, perhaps he too can be redeemed. Keitel's performance is powerful and tragic in its manical struggle with anger, self-hate, and sorrow. I thought this was a very good film, but I can't say I enjoyed watching much of it. It gets my recommendation, albeit a cautious one.