In “Bad Lieutenant”, director Werner Herzog transports his audience into post-Katrina New Orleans and into a world of drug cartels, corrupt cops, murder and lizards.

When Lieutenant Terrence McDonagh (Nicolas Cage) injures his back while saving the life of a drowning prisoner, he begins to treat his injury with Vicodin and cocaine, while struggling to remain a strong and indispensable member of the police force.

When an African family is murdered, suspicion falls on Big Fate (Xzibit)—a major drug supplier in McDonagh’s district. While trying to solve the murders, his prostitute girlfriend Frankie (Eva Mendes) angers one of her clients, forcing McDonagh to find an alternate source of income to pay his debts.

Big Fate agrees to provide McDonagh with the money in exchange for his intelligence on the whereabouts of the drug enforcement cops in his division.

The action and drama is strong throughout the film as the audience anxiously wonders whether McDonagh’s ego will get the better of him, or if he will recover from his addiction.

Herzog’s antihero serves to satirize law enforcement for, despite all the horrendous acts which he commits throughout the movie, McDonagh continues to rise in the ranks.

And of course, no one can write or talk about this movie without mentioning the lizards, which the camera focuses on throughout the film. Maybe the lizard motif exemplifies McDonagh’s reptilian qualities his sneakiness, cold-bloodedness and, at-times, laziness.

Cage’s human fallibility, Mendes’ role as a twisted guiding light and the bizarre lizards make the movie memorable, though certainly not in a “Top Ten Movies” list sort of way. While in previous movies Cage has often been a “good guy”, this role has him portraying a manic, desperate, yet intuitive investigator, cracking his typecast and becoming more admirable as a result.