Above is a MPAA rejected poster (because apparently your not allowed to hold a gun pointed against someone in a poster) for the crazy looking Werner Herzog movie Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, a movie that I said 15 months ago was the first American film from the 90’s to be remade by Hollywood, but it turns out with heinsight is really just an odd spiritual sequel/re-imagining of the 1992 flick, set in a different city.

But that’s all just semantics isn’t it?

Anyway, I just wanted to bring attention to how messed up that poster is, and how playing a cop who points a gun at a black hospital nurse and a helpless old lady, truly fits the insane career path that Nicolas Cage has gone down in the past six years or so. I can’t remember the last time I felt comfortable watching him on screen, and not reverberating a muffled “HUH” with bug-eyed shock at just what he was projecting on screen.

The movie recently played at the Telluride Film Festival, where Todd McCarthy of Variety said that there’s…

“…sort of deadpan zaniness, stemming from a steadfast conviction in its own absurdity, that gives “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” a strange distinction all its own. Not at all an art film, the picture lacks sufficient action to sate the appetites of sensation seekers, but star Nicolas Cage’s name means enough to offer some short-run B.O. traction and good home-viewing market returns… If Cage was looking for a vehicle in which his hyper-emoting would be dramatically justifiable, he found one here. Sometimes he’s so over the top it’s funny, which one can hope was intentional”.

The movie has yet to find a distributor for a U.S. or U.K. release.