There’ve been a couple major sequels and re-makes that have bombed recently, namely Joker and The Crow, and so this leads to the question: how do you successfully follow up a movie that seems like it could have no sequel?

Here’s the answer. The original 1992 Bad Lieutenant would seem like it could have no follow-up, but I argue this film succeeds for a couple reasons.

1. Good actors. I’m not a huge Nicholas Cage fan, but he does the job here, with his typical somewhat-unhinged burnout persona. Solid backups by people like Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, and even a memorable scene with Fairuza Balk.

2. Great director: Werner Herzog. Wikipedia sez:

French filmmaker François Truffaut once called Herzog “the most important film director alive”.

3. Low expectations. “Port of Call New Orleans” had relatively modest production budget of 25 mil so the fact that it only made 10 mil domestically was bad, but not a disaster. (I mean it only ran in 24-96 venues total so they weren’t expecting much!)

4. A story that could stand alone. Apparently Herzog didn’t even want to use the “Bad Lieutenant” prefix, and Abel Ferrara was mad about it, and there are no returning characters, so… Thematically there’s a parallel though, and I think the movie’s richer for that being made explicit in the title.

Anyway, it’s not an amazing movie or anything, it gets a bit campy at times, but I’m pretty sure Herzog’s doing that on purpose and it’s worth watching at least once.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yDkoKoZdXY
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Lieutenant:_Port_of_Call_New_Orleans