BAD LIEUTENANT

US, 1992, 98 minutes, Colour.
Harvey Keitel, Paul Hipp, Victor Argo.
Directed by Abel Ferrara.

Bad Lieutenant is a strong and disturbing film from Abel Ferrara. Ferrara's career has focused on urban stories, violence in crime, sin and the possibilities of salvation. He has a stark style, both realistic and stylised, which is not in the smooth Hollywood vein, offers characters, situations with extraordinary bluntness, leaving the audience to do their work.

After making Driller Killer and Ms 45, Ferrara made Fear City with a star cast and was employed on Miami Vice and the pilot for Crime Story. Other films include China Girl, Cat Chaser, King of New York, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Snake Eyes.

The film was co-written with Zoe Tamerlaine Lund (who appears as the drug addict Magdalena). It is a portrait of a corrupt policeman, his descent into the hell of drugs, alcohol, sexuality, gambling and disregard of family, co-workers, the law. However, he is confronted when a nun is raped in a church. Disregarding the situation, he hears her forgiveness of the rapists. It seems a last chance for him, he has a hallucination of Christ (like pious art of last century) in the aisle of the church and desperately makes a confession, a desperate prayer out of the depths. He is also a baseball fan and is relying on the Dodgers beating the Mets in order to make money and pay debts. This baseball motif goes right through the film from the opening credits. It blends in as a hope of salvation with the theme of the forgiving nun.

Harvey Keitel gives an extraordinarily strong performance as the bad lieutenant. In the early '90s, Keitel was making appearances in up to five films a year, a striking range of characterisations as varied as Thelma and Louise, Sister Act, Rising Sun, Snake Eyes and The Piano.

1.The portrait of a New York cop? Degradation? For what audience was the film made? With what effect?

2.The work of Abel Ferrara, the portrait of New York City, police work, police lives, crime, sin and depravity, possibilities of redemption?

3.The portrait of New York City, the ordinariness, the ugliness, the literal dark side? Crime, the streets, dives, apartment blocks, homes? The musical score? Songs and themes?

4.The title, the lieutenant as bad and good? The lack of background explanation, seeing him in action? His decline and descent? His personal depravity, callous attitudes, self-absorption? His treatment of others, use and abuse? The effect on him of this life? The background of his Catholicism, its doctrines, piety, icons? The bad lieutenant as not totally evil?

5.The initial baseball theme, the radio and the voice-over? The motif throughout the film? The lieutenant's gambling, listening to the radio, his ferocious outbursts as regards Daryl Strawberry and his home runs, striking out? The rage? Watching on television? The odds of the Mets to win? Discussions with his colleagues, the bets, the bookie? Giving tips? Covering up? His change of heart? The loss of his money? The defeat of the team?

6.The nun and the rape sequence, graphic and suggestive, the drug-addicted youths, the nun in her traditional habit, the violence on the church floor, presented as real/fantasy? The church, the sacrilege with the Hosts, the taking of the chalice and the vestments? The nun and the symbol of the habit, her vow of chastity, virginity, the church? In hospital and the lieutenant looking at her body through the crack in the door? The sister comforting her? The police and their questions, her reticence? The attendant bishop and priest? The nun pictured as a religious icon, saying her Rosary, ethereal in prayer, silent? Her confession and the lieutenant overhearing it? Her not naming her assailants, saying that she knew them, wanting to give them a chance, saying that they were good? Her saying that they did not love her and she did not love them during the rape? Knowing, forgiving from her heart? The interrogation by the lieutenant, confrontation, demanding whether she had the right to forgive, their going free and raping others? Her only answer being for him to pray? The effect of this experience on the lieutenant?

7.The images of Christ crucified, the range of crucifixes in the church, close-ups of the head, the torso, complete crucifixes? The crucifixes during the rape scene? Jesus alive on the cross suffering as the nun was raped? The suffering and forgiveness? The significance of Jesus, audience awareness of a theology of redemption? Forgiveness? The discussions about Jesus and salvation? The apparition for the lieutenant, Jesus like a statue standing in the aisle, looking, the lieutenant abusing him, asking where he was, the de Profundis prayer, the extreme depths of despair and need? Jesus reaching out to touch? Transformed into the woman with the chalice, taking him to the rapists and the possibility of success in an arrest?

8.The lieutenant in himself, his age, experience? Minimal relationship with his wife? His mother-in-law watching him - seeing him take the cocaine? The women in the house? His relationship with his children, taking the boys to school, the discussion about the bathroom, swearing, urging them to be men? Their squabbling with each other in the car? The girls at home, the first communion? His absence from the house, turning up, sleeping on the sofa, watching the TV? The meaning of his family relationships?

9.New York crimes and brutality, blood-spattered cars, corpses? The police having to face death, rape? Immersed in this world and its effect on them? Coping abilities and mechanisms? The range of the police, their investigations, talking amongst themselves, gambling, swearing, stories? The discussions from a Catholic perspective about the sacrilege to the nun? The lieutenant's slighting of the church, seeing it as a racket?

10.The lieutenant and his cocaine-taking, in the car, chasing the dealer as a cover, getting the drugs, smoking the crack, the pills? Going to the dealer's home, the elderly woman giving him the drugs? Going to Magdalena's place, preparing the crack? Smoking the crack with the rapists? His drinking and his drunkenness? Sexual obsessions, the two women and their performance, his relationship with them, the standing nude and his bewilderment? With Magdalena? The two girls in the car, his verbal abuse, his manipulation of them, his asking them to humiliate themselves, the description of fellatio, masturbation? Religion and his hypocrisy at the first communion? The denunciation of the church as a racket? The hallucination in the church, the abuse of Jesus - yet the request, "Where were you?"

11.His work as a detective, the leads, stoned, yet sometimes effective? The hold-up in the store, his dealing with the Korean, with the police, confronting the young men, stealing their money? The money from the hold-up and his using it? Planting drugs?

12.The nun and the attack, the rights of women, should she have denounced the rapist or not? The priest and the bishop? Respect for the nun? The lieutenant and his pleading with her, the credibility of her stance?

13.The rapists, the confrontation with them, the girls in the vestments, stoned, the smoking of crack? The lieutenant calling them scumbags? Projecting his own depravity onto them? Yet the effect of the nun, the possibility of forgiveness, his taunting them with her forgiving them? Giving the money and letting them go?

14.The lieutenant in the city, the despair, the baseball loss? His death - and the crowds gathering round to look? Requiem for a bad lieutenant?

15.The city, justice, the system, evil, sin, despair and redemption?

16.The gospel theme of living by the sword and dying by the sword - the only way to save oneself from the depravity is to opt out of the evil by death?