Months ago, before Werner Herzog had unveiled his mostly acclaimed Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans to festival crowds in Venice and Toronto, a freaky little trailer had shown up to to blow everyone's mind with anticipation. "What, you don't have a lucky crack pipe?" Nicolas Cage's title character inquired between lung-searing tokes, pointing a gun at grandmothers' heads and bellowing epithets at anyone within earshot. But that was then; today, a newer, safer spot trickles into the open.
At least this one provides a little more background on how and why Cage's decorated detective Terrence McDonough loses it: a simple workplace injury, it appears, for which conventional medical aid wields no solution. Enter the hard stuff, followed by a slippery slope into dependency, robbery, gang collusion (with a drug lord played by Xhibit), meditative moments in front of massive fish tanks, and Terrence's ladylove (Eva Mendes) in various phases of submission. And, naturally, a few notorious, hallucinatory iguanas.
This trailer has all the festival and critical plaudits that the previous one obviously lacked. It also boasts a gloss and narrative anchor that prompts one to wonder if the original sales pitch -- "Nicolas Cage goes completely freaking apeshit" -- wasn't a little more compelling to both Herzog's core consituency and the genre audience for whom this was made in the first place. In the end, though, all the hilarious, scowling henchmen and all the sneering freeze-frames bleeding to red make a case for a pulpy ride you know you're going to take no matter what. If "Shoot him again -- his soul's still dancing" doesn't propel you to the theater, then nothing will.
VERDICT: Sold!