Bad Lieutenant (1992)

A police Lieutenant goes about his daily tasks of investigating homicides, but is more interested in pursuing his vices. He has accumulated a massive debt betting on baseball, and he keeps doubling to try to recover. His bookies are beginning to get agitated. The Lieutenant does copious amounts of drugs, cavorts with prostitutes, and uses his status to take advantage of teenage girls. While investigating a nun's rape, he begins to reflect on his lifestyle.

About as bad as pretentious movie making can be. Good concept but so tedious and without any context. The lead is REALLY, REALLY bad. He is constantly snorting cocaine, injecting and snorting heroin, smoking crack, drinking prodigious amount of alchohol. Exactly how does he function? Between these activities he uses prostitutes, rips off criminals, takes drugs from crime scenes. Also bets hugh amounts of money through dangerous bookies and organizes the betting for his fellow cops. He also sexually abuses young girls he catches out without a license. Along the way he does some small amount of police work, has emotional break-downs and presumably raises the children we see in the first scene. Whew!!! And I thought I was busy!! Pretty much that is the movie - we follow him through his days of depravity (no one else in the film seems to notice) with the playoff series between the Mets and the Dodgers in the background. In the end, through no effort on his own part, he finds the bad guys. I suppose there is some morality message here or some great poser of a philosophical question. But no, this is just drivel dressed up with violence and vileness.

It took 3 or 4 seperate occasions for me to even get through this movie. Yeah... and I saw Harvey Keitel naked. Did not need that. This is possible the worst movie I've ever seen... and this past weekend I watched Dinoshark on SyFy. Take that to the bank.

*/*****

1/5 Stars