The Bad Lieutenant

Via Coming Soon, the poster for Werner Herzog’s remake of The Bad Lieutenant, featuring Nicholas Cage as Dr. Mabuse. Costarring Val Kilmer, Eva Mendes, and Brad Dourif, the film premieres at TIFF, so we’ll soon see if this update is genius or folly.

Subtitled ‘Port of Call New Orleans,’ let’s hope there aren’t plans to reassign the Bad Lieutenant to cities across the country like the CSI franchise. This photo does Nick Cage no favors by tinting his lips a sickly shade of dried slug, but then, it doesn’t like he’s doing himself any favors by managing to overact on the poster itself. He’s got the Harvey Keitel pickled bristle down pat. Though instead of threatening, that glare looks more like the peevish mope Keitel played in Sister Act. We ran the red band promo back in May, but watching it again I still wonder if everybody got the memo specifying whether this is supposed to be drama or comedy. Maybe that’s the fun of it? God knows the original was humorless enough.