And sure enough, many critics have convinced themselves that this is high art, with Herzog the auteur twisting a genre flick to his own ends, creating yet another portrait of a nearly insane obsessive. A more reasonable assessment would be: “Miami Vice” on crack. It’s your basic police procedural drama enlivened with random hallucinatory shots of lizards and dialogue like, “Do fish love dreams?” thrown in to be, well, rather self-consciously arty. Herzog and a crime flick do not make for a comfortable fit.
The story is reminiscent of the original: corrupt, loose cannon detective finds himself surprised to learn he still has a conscience. The film follows Cage’s cocaine-numbed cop as he shakes down nightclubbing couples for drugs (and the sheer thrill of humiliating them), helps himself to coke from the evidence room, and then does even more drugs with his prostitute girlfriend (Eva Mendes). Coupled with this is his surprisingly diligent investigation of a multiple homicide, in which a family of African immigrants — including the children — were brutally gunned down.

See the full article from “The Japan Times”

Leave a Reply