Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant provokes two questions even before we've thought much about the film. Both are about timing. Why did it take the best part of a year after its US premiere to find a screen in the UK? And why does the film itself take so long to find out what sort of work it wants to be? It becomes a pretty amazing movie when it does find out, but - this would be a supplementary question - why couldn't Herzog have found out before or during shooting, or even in the editing room? Was he waiting for Nicolas Cage to turn into Klaus Kinski on the screen? It is possible that the second set of questions is itself an answer to the first.

LRB 24 June 2010 | PDF Download