Holy shit Herzog is a genius.
The film starts out as a police procedural with the typical hard boiled and vulgar lingo like shit bird. We're reminded of the Wire and NYPD Blue as Nicholas Cage plays a drug addicted world wearly cop going along with the day to day grind in post Katrina New Orleans. In fact the main screenwriter is a former writer for NYPD Blue and about half a dozen other cop TV dramas. Suddenly we see an accident involving a dead aligator on the road as Nicholas Cage doesn't think twice about the corrupt prick that he is, and then we see another aligator stealthily creeping around the bushes just off of the side of the road with trippy music to accompany an already completely delerious scene. And at that point we realize that this is no ordinary police procedural, but one with the crazy trademarked Herzog spin that we have know to love over the years, ever since he started making movies as part of the New German Wave revival in making cinema. Cage gets more and more fucked up on drugs, not thinking twice about his own demeanor or morality. Of course he is trying to solve a murder, but getting almost no sleep and taking massive amounts of cocaine and opiates along with a joint he smokes in front a man he just took out of a closet at gunpoint definitely doesn't help his professionalism. Or the fact that he is a degenerate gambler as well. And this is where the genius of this movie comes in. A lesser director would try to make an artistic statement or try too hard to make the movie trippy. But because the movie is a fast paced police procedural, it doesn't miss a beat. He doesn't beat around the bush or go back to anything. The whole movie is like a game of tips (the one where you throw the ball in the air and catch it in the air jumping around), it just keeps going forward and we are happy although a little reluctant to come along for the ride. We are suddenly drawn into Cages crazy world also without thinking about how moral he is acting, he just needs to do something at any given moment, and is surprisingly pragmatic in a completely warped way. The way he acts gives the movie sort of a cartoonish quality. Even when Cage is fucking with all the wrong people he somehow pulls it all off in the end. We must remember that this is the same director who shot a documentary movie about a man who was eaten by grizzly bears.
Comparisons With other Movies:
Snatch and Lock Stock: While those were cool movies, they took real London Street Thugs like Vinny Jones and made one long massively overblown cartoon out of them. They were full of slapstick violence too. In this case the slapstick is emotional and what makes this movie better than those setting it apart.
Danish Films: Which brings us right along to point number two. What the Danes do effortlessly but the American/German team has done quite well is a certain tongue-in-cheek deapdan dark humor. People do really fucked up things without thinking about it and talk logistics rather than how bad what they are doing is. Festen comes to mind, when they main goal is to tie one of the brothers to a tree. Adams apples when the Nazi pulls out a gun to scare the rest and they all pull out guns as if it was nothing.
Tarantino: This film doesn't beat pulp fiction, but what makes it so damn compelling and original is that
Ghost Dog
Atlantic City
The film starts out as a police procedural with the typical hard boiled and vulgar lingo like shit bird. We're reminded of the Wire and NYPD Blue as Nicholas Cage plays a drug addicted world wearly cop going along with the day to day grind in post Katrina New Orleans. In fact the main screenwriter is a former writer for NYPD Blue and about half a dozen other cop TV dramas. Suddenly we see an accident involving a dead aligator on the road as Nicholas Cage doesn't think twice about the corrupt prick that he is, and then we see another aligator stealthily creeping around the bushes just off of the side of the road with trippy music to accompany an already completely delerious scene. And at that point we realize that this is no ordinary police procedural, but one with the crazy trademarked Herzog spin that we have know to love over the years, ever since he started making movies as part of the New German Wave revival in making cinema. Cage gets more and more fucked up on drugs, not thinking twice about his own demeanor or morality. Of course he is trying to solve a murder, but getting almost no sleep and taking massive amounts of cocaine and opiates along with a joint he smokes in front a man he just took out of a closet at gunpoint definitely doesn't help his professionalism. Or the fact that he is a degenerate gambler as well. And this is where the genius of this movie comes in. A lesser director would try to make an artistic statement or try too hard to make the movie trippy. But because the movie is a fast paced police procedural, it doesn't miss a beat. He doesn't beat around the bush or go back to anything. The whole movie is like a game of tips (the one where you throw the ball in the air and catch it in the air jumping around), it just keeps going forward and we are happy although a little reluctant to come along for the ride. We are suddenly drawn into Cages crazy world also without thinking about how moral he is acting, he just needs to do something at any given moment, and is surprisingly pragmatic in a completely warped way. The way he acts gives the movie sort of a cartoonish quality. Even when Cage is fucking with all the wrong people he somehow pulls it all off in the end. We must remember that this is the same director who shot a documentary movie about a man who was eaten by grizzly bears.
Comparisons With other Movies:
Snatch and Lock Stock: While those were cool movies, they took real London Street Thugs like Vinny Jones and made one long massively overblown cartoon out of them. They were full of slapstick violence too. In this case the slapstick is emotional and what makes this movie better than those setting it apart.
Danish Films: Which brings us right along to point number two. What the Danes do effortlessly but the American/German team has done quite well is a certain tongue-in-cheek deapdan dark humor. People do really fucked up things without thinking about it and talk logistics rather than how bad what they are doing is. Festen comes to mind, when they main goal is to tie one of the brothers to a tree. Adams apples when the Nazi pulls out a gun to scare the rest and they all pull out guns as if it was nothing.
Tarantino: This film doesn't beat pulp fiction, but what makes it so damn compelling and original is that
Ghost Dog
Atlantic City
