PLOT: A drug-addicted cop (Shun Oguri) in Tokyo, who’s in debt to the Yakuza, tries to solve a series of gruesome murders that bring him head-to-head with an American FBI agent (Lily James).
REVIEW: Bad Lieutenant has to be one of the most unlikely franchises of all time. Abel Ferrara’s original, NC-17-rated Harvey Keitel flick never exactly cried out for a follow-up, but that didn’t stop the rights holders from teaming up with Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage to make Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, which—despite the baggage that comes with the title—was actually quite entertaining. As such, Takashi Miike now takes his turn at the helm of a Japan-set follow-up which, again, features another lieutenant on the beat who—wouldn’t you know it—turns out to be “bad.” Well, he’s bad in that he’s on the hook to the Yakuza and ingests copious amounts of drugs, with meth being his favourite. But, like Cage in Port of Call New Orleans, he’s nowhere near as “bad” as Keitel was in the original. Not even Miike can be as bold as Ferrara.
In fact, despite all of Miike’s infamy, this is a depressingly conventional cop thriller that offers nothing new to the corrupt-cop genre. Oguri’s antihero is fairly routine as far as these things go, with him rumpled and grumpy, but he doesn’t get a particularly electric showcase. Miike has made a pretty restrained movie, with only a couple of short bursts of violence, albeit quite conventional for what it is.
For the first half-hour, Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo is merely boring, but when Lily James enters the fray, it becomes atrocious. While a good actress, James is spectacularly miscast as a hard-boiled FBI agent who’s supposed to be our antihero’s equal. Adopting a strange Southern accent, a constant scowl, and unconvincing lethality, she never once seems like a good fit for the role. When Miike briefly has her start a nightclub melee, which seems lifted from another movie, he has her strip down to a tank top and pull hair flips—that’s how silly it gets. James is so abysmal in the film, she can’t even make her character smoking a cigarette look convincing.
Her character is in Tokyo because a U.S. vice presidential candidate’s daughter, played by wrestler Liv Morgan, is on a rampage through Tokyo’s underworld, seducing Yakuza members and then snapping their necks. She’s not even the only serial killer the titular cop is after, with a meth-addled Yakuza member also racking up quite the body count, with the added wrinkle that when he kills a victim, he minces their organs and turns them into meatballs.
Throughout the entire film, I kept waiting for Miike’s film to snap into high gear, or at least show a little energy. But it remains a dull slog throughout, with the capital crime being that, unlike the Bad Lieutenants played by Keitel and Cage, this one isn’t the least bit interesting. As such, this is a huge misfire for all involved, particularly James, whose performance could expose her to ridicule were certain clips to go viral. Hopefully for her, it simply passes under the radar, with her actually earning excellent reviews for another movie she has at TIFF called The Liberation.
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