Abel Ferrara claims he patterned his one masterpiece after police autopsy films...or was it Bresson's A MAN ESCAPED? No other movie in contemporary cinema so perfectly conveys what New York City actually feels like; and even Scorsese himself was moved to comment that Ferrara had taken his unlikely-road-to-redemption theme to the ultimate outer limits.
Flat as a home movie, or a porno, BAD LIEUTENANT exerts a stranglehold fascination. Every clunky detail is amazing: a nun raped on the altar is interrupted by images of the Lieutenant's preschool kids watching a WW2 cartoon that chirps, "We did it before and we can do it again!" Keitel's performance convinces you that in every scene he knows exactly which internal organ is failing and why, even when the audience is left in the dark. Balls-to-the-wall in its unabashedly Martyesque vision of the Church as secret redeemer, BAD LIEUTENANT may be an even riper portrait of the shadow self of nineties America than NATURAL BORN KILLERS. It's one of those movies--BLUE VELVET comes to mind--where its maker seems to say so cogently everything he thinks and feels that you wonder why he would ever bother to make another movie. Sadly, Ferrara's post-LIEUTENANT output has borne that question out.