It's unfortunate Werner Herzog's The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans was named to be connected to Abel Ferrara's 1992 film Bad Lieutenant, thus creating a forced comparison -- they're really quite different beasts and, other than having protagonists who share particular traits, have little to do with each other. Ferrara's picture features Harvey Keitel in a searing, serious performance that makes you feel sleazy just to watch it; but Herzog's approach is lighter, utilizing Nicolas Cage in a manic and, yes, very entertaining performance.

Cage's bad Lt. McDonagh is brash, addicted to many vices, and blatantly disregards the law even as he pursues criminals, but he's also very smart, and somewhere in that body of his are the hints of a redeemable soul. However, in the meantime, he's on the trail of a murderer, acting irresponsibly, getting into trouble that's way over his head, and hallucinating iguanas. And yet somehow this is fun -- a result of a unique synergy between Cage and Herzog, who decided his film was going to be about how a man can live carelessly and get away with it because the universe is indifferent. That's right, this time a fellow might actually benefit from cosmic randomness. What's compelling here is how Lt. McDonagh just forces his way through events without attaching meaning or morals to any of them; and yet within him are ideas of moral justice and a lingering sense of right and wrong (that he'll selectively listen to). No matter how badly he behaves, that compass is there.

Herzog is investigating the mystery -- and impact -- of man's sense of morality existing in a world that clearly doesn't care about the outcome one way or the other. People are simply trying to survive through all their self-defined vices, and, in the end, 'tis not the universe that metes out justice -- we are our own rewarders, punishers, and forgivers for our behavior.

(Released by First Look Pictures and rated "R" for drug use and language throughout, some violence and sexuality.)

Review also posted at www.windowtothemovies.com.