Is the Bad Lieutenant ‘franchise’ an excuse for wild auteur filmmakers to craft slyly black comedies full of sex and violence, and ideation-detritus that never made it into their other pictures? Is the Bad Lieutenant franchise even a franchise, or a vaguely connected idea of directorial maximalism?
After the cult success of Abel Ferrara’s disturbingly violent, sexual, and catholic soaked New York City character study (essayed by a fearless, often naked Harvey Keitel), every 15 years or so another sensationally eccentric director will take a shot at this in another city. In 2009, it was Werner Herzog grafting his own proclivities and non-sequitur asides with Nicolas Cage in post-Katrina New Orleans.
When a producer purchased title rights, it led to some misunderstanding that it was going to be a remake or a sequel. It is neither. Herzog famously said, "I never seen that film, or any of his other films, I don't even know who Ferrara is. But it is fine. I heard he is a fine filmmaker, very bold. And kind of vociferous which I like. That is what moviemaking is all about." Which is pretty much the spirit of the enterprise going forward.
Takashi Miike is a vastly different filmmaker from Ferrara or Herzog in style, in substance, and in pure prolific output. But I do believe he has done his homework here, as there are many elements of Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo that rhyme with Ferrara’s original picture, and also aim to up the hallucinatory WTF mania of Herzog’s.
Perhaps the craziest innovation the Japanese auteur brings to the table here is to craft the film as a violent fairy tale, and by Miike’s standards, the bad lieutenant here (played by Shun Oguri) actually kind of a good guy. I mean, without any spoilers, he does make the world a better place in a roundabout confusion of action and negligence. This might be the most radically unique (and frankly, bonkers) idea in a film that throws a lot at the wall to see what might stick.
Lieutenant Yabuki has driven his wife and kids away from the city with his all night gambling, boozing, drug abuse, and general disinterest in being a family man. He has major gambling debts (with many of the Yakuza he is tasked with investigating) and has to borrow a car from his personal meth dealer just to get around.
Perhaps the craziest innovation the Japanese auteur brings to the table here is to craft the film as a violent fairy tale, and by Miike’s standards, the bad lieutenant here (played by Shun Oguri) actually kind of a good guy. I mean, without any spoilers, he does make the world a better place in a roundabout confusion of action and negligence. This might be the most radically unique (and frankly, bonkers) idea in a film that throws a lot at the wall to see what might stick.
Lieutenant Yabuki has driven his wife and kids away from the city with his all night gambling, boozing, drug abuse, and general disinterest in being a family man. He has major gambling debts (with many of the Yakuza he is tasked with investigating) and has to borrow a car from his personal meth dealer just to get around.
Haunted by his own choices that resulted in the death of his partner, he is, in the classic sense, a corrupt and bad cop in the mold of the other two films with the same title.
But mainly, Yabuki is tired. His hang-jaw face and disheveled suit single him out from the rest of his department, even as he seems to be doing more work, and far, far more all-night investigative drug-fuelled benders than the rest of them combined.
His latest case is a grizzly collection of seemingly unrelated murders of mid-level Yakuza, one involving strangulation to the point where the head is twisted around for the victim to examine the prolific amount of body tattoos on his back. The other involved a murder victim chopped up into tiny pieces, with the tissue and bones into meatballs, and set out on the victim’s balcony to attract large swarms of crows.
His latest case is a grizzly collection of seemingly unrelated murders of mid-level Yakuza, one involving strangulation to the point where the head is twisted around for the victim to examine the prolific amount of body tattoos on his back. The other involved a murder victim chopped up into tiny pieces, with the tissue and bones into meatballs, and set out on the victim’s balcony to attract large swarms of crows.
We are definitely in Miike headspace here.
There is a kind of procedural going on here, in between Yabuki doing several different types of drugs, hustling criminals out of their own cash, and dropping heaping amounts of cash on dice games, and getting blowjobs from his regular pair of prostitutes (who also favour a little bit of ping pong foreplay). Yabuki's surprisingly pragmatic outlook here is, why not let what is left of these Yakuza merely take themselves (and his debts) out all by themselves.
Into this already crowded mix enters an American FBI agent, who demands some of Yabuki's time and Shinjuku expertise to hunt down a missing person. It's a wackadoodle performance from Lily James, with a slightly unconvincing Georgian drawl and a mysterious machismo that is equal parts sexy and hilarious. There is another American in the picture, Liv Morgan (of WWE fame), the missing senator’s violently unhinged daughter with a penchant for sushi, short tattooed men, and very rough sex.
There is so much going on here, with several crimes, several killers, and several severe tonal shifts, that Miike and his bad lieutenant frequently take breaks from the city lights, trash-filled back alleys, and familiar banal sleaze to meditate in the woods with a tranquil pond, with Yabuki dipping his feet in the cool waters.
Unlike the other ‘protagonists’ of the Bad Lieutenant films, Yabuki feels merely misguided; as if he accidentally fell off the proper path and was left to wander astray, and narcotically distance himself, from his own psychological waywardness. He does not belong anywhere, but he desperately desires to find a purpose. While spinning so many plates, and making an ambitious (if desperate) play to tie up all three of his working assignments with all of his gambling debts, and still have sex with anything that moves, he is a surprisingly likeable anti-hero.
At one point, he accompanies one of his prostitute friends to her kid’s school play and participates as a ‘stand in’ dad for a parent-child dance number. The film is relentless in its ability to take strange narrative turns.
But Miike wants to offer something of a message with his seemingly incoherent pastiche of madness. A bit of philosophy, however hippy-dippy, that every life has a purpose, even if that purpose is only to be food for crows. Which begs the question, Is Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo any good? Well, it is certainly something. Which seems to be the hallmark of this unlikely series of films.