Finite Focus: You’re Daddy Will Be Right Back (Bad Lieutenant)

Abel Ferrara’s masterpiece in all its gritty, lizard-brain, full frontal glory is 96 minutes of simply a shocking abuse of authority. Bad Lieutenant is certainly never going to be accused of false advertising. Ignoring the catholic atonement and sacrifice at the end of the picture for the moment (which give the picture arguably its climax and a lot of juicy thematic grist) lets just focus on just how much of the run time is on the abuse of power and trust. The Bad Lieutenant, even when committing crime is abusing the criminal pact, but mainly he uses his status as a police or ranking senior officer to live off those beneath him: civilians, criminals, patrolman.

There is a plethora of sequences, each one more shocking than the next: The Lieutenant selling evidence-drugs to a drug dealer then taking some back, for personal use (right in front of him while telling an apartment resident that it is all police business, and that is the significant part), the infamous masturbation to two teenage girls in the car, there is also prostitute humiliation, the practical abandonment of his own kids, the gambling scheme cheating his fellow officers by taking their money but betting on the opposite to what they were betting so as to make off like a bandit, the list goes on and on.

The below scene, which captures the essence of may of the Lieutenant’s crimes in an almost casual manner, has the Lieutenant walking in on a patrolman trying to sort out a convenience store robbery. Before even assessing the situation properly, he has the patrolman go get him a beer from the fridge (not just a beer, but one of those extra-large tallboys), he then, quite efficiently, if not with any tact, gets a dollar amount from the shopowner of the theft. He then discharges his firearm (and would have shot one of the perpetrators point blank if they didn’t move at the last second) to underscore his authority and scare the living shit out of both the thieves and the audience. Temper or levelheadedness does not enter into the equation although there is no questioning the results. The duty officer is told to take the proprietor down to the station for a statement, then the Lieutenant simply takes the money and pockets it, and browses the store for a little snack food. The kicker being a witness at the end of the scene, the shopowner’s daughter - an innocent and silent witness/victim to the selfish evils of men.

Like most of the film, this takes place in clearly articulated wide and long shots. Harvey Keitel framed in the shop, a brute in an ordered landscape of neatly stacked food items is a lovely image that is counter to the many gritty and cruel-world setpieces in the film. Although a civilized setting makes the Lieutenant no less inhumane. At the end of the day, people remember the negative over the positive in this film, and actually that is probably the right reaction, while a good deed is done at one point, it certainly does not atone for all the villainy on display for the rest of the movie. Well, that is unless you are a Christian true believer. I’m not really sure where Abel Ferrara is coming from though.