No one does sleazy like Nicolas Cage. As a matter of fact, he is so convincing as a coked up, corrupt cop in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, that when he snorted the fake cocaine on camera, it’s reported that director Werner Herzog would stop shooting and demand to know if Cage had ingested the real thing. That’s how good Cage is in this film, that’s the kind of talent that earned him an Academy Award for Leaving Las Vegas, and will probably garner an Oscar nomination this year.

Which is not to say that he’s easy to watch in this update or reimaging, if you will, of Abel Ferrara's 1992 original Bad Lieutenant. Just when you think Cage, as Terence McDonagh has sunken about as low as a human can go, he plungers even further down into the dregs of post-Katrina New Orleans. Shaking down suspects for drugs and then using them is a mitzvah compared to some the other corrupt scams he facilitates. And he uses his obtuse partner (Val Kilmer), his hooker girlfriend (Eva Mendez) his addiction-recovering father (Tom Bower) and his beer-swilling stepmother (Jennifer Coolidge) to feed his need for freak.

As dark as they come, director Herzog has infused this film with both psychological and physical shadows. Not exactly the type to direct a romantic comedy, he was nominated last year for an Oscar for his documentary Encounters at the End of the World, but perhaps his best known film in the US is Rescue Dawn, a Viet Nam war flick starring Christian Bale.

I’m not quite sure who the intended audience for this film might be, because watching the relentless corruption is a little draining after awhile, as are the myriad false endings, any of which would have probably been better than the one that was selected. Still, you can’t deny the fact that Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is an admirable piece of work. It’s just a question of who’s up for admiring it.

Rated R

--Lisa Johnson Mandell