‘Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans’ Poster Released

It’s been a back-and-forth struggle getting much excitement brewing for Werner Herzog’s remake of ‘Bad Lieutenant.’  Despite what the director says, it’s a remake.  At the very least, it’s a spin-off, a concept I thought died out with ‘The Scorpion King’ and ‘Elektra.’  The initial thoughts, particularly of Nicolas Cage coming on board, were that the film would be a bland retreading of familiar territory. Then the trailer came along, and that distilled some negativity towards the project.  SOME negativity.  The undying thoughts of it being a needless remake still wandered out there, somewhere.  However, that trailer was so bat-shit crazy, it actually moved the film up a few notches on the anticipation chart.

Now, courtesy of Coming Soon, we have the film’s official poster.  While you can’t construe much opinion of a film from its poster, you have to take notice of the mind-set going into creating it.  It’s boring.  It’s Cage’s and Eva Mendes floating heads, Cage giving you the “Why don’t you put the bunny down” look, red and white lettering, and some crime scene imagery below.  You almost think it’s going to stun us by not putting some lame tagline in the mix somewhere, but, then, you get near the bottom, and you read “THE ONLY CRIMINAL HE CAN’T CATCH IS HIMSELF.”  Now, that’s one to grow on.

Like I said, you can’t gather much opinion on a film based on its poster, but you wonder if Herzog had anything to offer in the making of this bland, stock one-sheet.  ‘Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans’ is set to bow at the Venice Film Festival today (September 4th).  It is set for wide release on November 20th.