Can there be an Oscar for "Best Fucking Film Ever"? Because, I've found it.

For as long as there has been mass media of any kind in America the fiction and fictionalized accounts of life have followed a very basic arc. 

Someone has it bad or only kind of good in the first act. We learn about some of the things that make them who they are and hopefully become somewhat immersed in their world. A conflict is introduced. Ships set sail, pies are fucked.

In the second act, the plot is moved forward. We learn a little more about our character and what makes them tick. If the main character is a good person, we see them prepare to due battle against the rival dance team, evil empire, romantic competitor or their own awkwardness. If they are a anti-hero, this is the part where they get the money and the women. The pieces move into place to face the whatever it is that's been bugging us since the beginning. If it is a shitty movie, this is where we find our montages.

Finally comes the third act! If it is a happy movie, the hero kills the dragon, gets the girl and perhaps learns a little something along the way. If it's a movie about anti-hero, we see their downfall as they learn a lesson about the error of their ways. If it is a Michael Bay movie, everything explodes.

This is the rhythm most of us have come to expect when experiencing any story. The details may change, Bruce Willis may be dead, but at the end of the day it's easy to tell what kind of a story your in for from the 20th minute or the 50th page.

Werner Herzog, one would assume, is aware of these conventions. For reasons only he can know, he has put his middle finger forward to all of them with a little movie called The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.

Look at this man - Does it really look like Werner (you must always say this slowly in a German accent Verrrrnnnnurrrrr) gives a fuck about you and your fucking 3 act Michael Bay structure? I didn't think so.

The movie opens with Nicolas Cage and Val Kilmer (that's right, two of the main characters in this movie are played by Nicolas Cage and what is sadly not Val Kilmer in a fat suit) walking into a flooded police station (mid-Katrina) to retrieve some nudey pictures a colleague has left in their locker. Cage soon realizes there is a prisoner stuck in the flooding jail cells, and after some teasing, jumps in to rescue the prisoner.

Next thing, we see Cage severely injured in a doctors office getting a prescription for narcotics.

The next thing we see is a crazy fucking Nicolas Cage looking like a crazy asshole, carrying a 44 Magnum in his waist and acting like a crazy person. Intermittently he does bumps of coke. He is at a crime scene where a family has been murdered in cold blood. 

Cage get's assigned as lead on the case, the movie begins in earnest. That's right - 6 minutes into the movie and we have a major character development, a pile of dead bodies and head spinning craziness. Suddenly things begin to happen, in theory they are driving the plot forward in solving the murder, but the caveat is that Cage must stay very, very high at all times in order to function remotely (I suppose it's like Crank in that way?).

Here are some of those things:

-Cage is Eva Mendes's (who is a high class call girl) lover slash pimp. At random intervals he has sex with her, intimidates her John's and does drugs with her.

-Whenever Cage is very high, the movie randomly will focus in on an animal, sometimes real, sometimes imagined. During these scenes the camera goes all wonky and the music changes. We get great dialogue like "Who put these fucking iguanas on my desk?"

-In the process of tracking down a witness, Cage intimidates an old women and her care taker. If you think this scene is funny, you will love the movie. If you find it unpalatable, then you will not make it through the first 10 minutes.

-Xzibit is in the movie. He is a drug dealer. He smokes crack with Nicholas Cage

-Cage robs a pair of clubbers by pretending to be a cop. He then has sex with the girl, on a car, while smoking crack and saying such things as "Did your daddy neglect you?"

-Cage falling asleep during sex.

Getting the picture?

Sounds pretty fucking random right? Like maybe as you bounce through this incoherent thread, you might start to think that it's not really going anywhere, and that it's a poorly thought out disaster? This is where Werner laughs in our face and says with his magical narrative powers "Vhat, did you tsink this vas fucking Transformers 2?" and as suddenly as it spiraled out of control, the movie begins to bind itself back together to become a satisfying, if ambiguous fully formed narrative.