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The Bad Lieutenant
(****)
He's an alcoholic, gambler, pusher, user, and a Lieutenant in the NYPD. We don't have a name for him, and it's not important. He's simply the Bad Lieutenant, and he's played by Harvey Keitel. The Lieutenant is not a nice guy. We first meet him as he's giving his children a ride to school. The scene is terse, and we know they aren't in the best of relations. The entire trip is filled with yelling about the children missing the bus. "What are you, men or mice!? Call me, I'll throw her the fuck out!"
Every day in his life is drugs and money. His job only exists to further his penchant for gambling and narcotics. We see the Lieutenant working a few times throughout the movie, although most of the time we see him he's actually on-duty. But the only conversations he has with anyone concern bets on the World Series, and drugs. This is a man so depraved we wonder if there's any hope for him at all. We barely see his family, but we get the idea that we probably know them better than he does. He only stops home to pass out on the couch, and he's up and out as quickly as he can get cocaine and alcohol into his system.
His world is one of repitition. Every day is getting high and spending a lot of money on bets. The only time he's working it's to enhance his ability to do those things. His entire world is repitive, but the Lieutenant is degrading a little more every day. His only variation in this schedule is working, and for him working is robbing two kids of their stolen money from a grocery store. Working is planting evidence at a crime scene so he can leave and get high. And, in one of the most disturbing scenes in the film, working is the mental rape of two teenage girls.
I said it's hard to see if there's any hope for the Lieutenant. He's spent so much time destroying himself, it's impossible for the viewer to see any chance at redemption; forgiveness. He seems to feel that way too. We meet up with the Lieutenant near the end of his vicious cycle. His gambling habit has taken him to a particularly vicious bookie who threatens death on him if the Lieutenant doesn't pay off his debts. And it's here that our harried Lieutenant overhears of a crime against a nun. Two men broke into the church and brutally beat and raped her.
At first, he doesn't seem to care. At this point in his life, the only thing that matters is the Mets winning the series, and his next high. But soon we see him getting more involved. Especially intriguing is the revelation that she forgives them. What those two did was a sick thing. Yet she forgives them. Is there hope for our Lieutenant?
Keitel has long been known for taking risky roles, and this is his most risky. I can't imagine any other actor who would be willing to show themself in such an unfavorable light. There is a particularly disturbing scene of the Lieutenant standing up, fully naked, and drinking. This was undoubtedly the reason for the NC-17, and it shows us just how far away from goodness the Lieutenant is. However, I can't imagine anyone but Keitel playing this role. As the Lieutenant, he brings a convincing light to a man who believes in God, but he can't imagine God wanting anything to do with him. This is one of Keitel's best roles since Mean Streets, if not his best.
Interesting things are done with the sound and the camera in this film. The film opens with a loud argument on the radio over who will win the World Series. This loud raucous is a taste of what the movie soon delivers. Every scene allows us to hear something else to indicate just what the Lieutenant cares most about. At crime scenes, we can hear in the background people talking about the crime while the Lieutenant talks about the baseball. In the car, the police radio is barely audible, while the radio playing the game is blaring. Pictures of his children are laid out on the table, only to be covered in cocaine that the Lieutenant snorts to get himself moving in the morning.
Despite all this, the Lieutenant is not a bad person. He does bad things, but he is not a bad person. As the raped nun puts is "the needy take, and the needy need." Our Lieutenant has been pushed down this path so long, he doesn't know that forgiveness is there if he has the courage to ask for it.