THE FIRST TIME I SAW AN ABEL Ferrara film was in the summer of 1993, as part of a quadruple bill of Harvey Keitel movies at the Prince Charles cinema in London. The film was the recently released Bad Lieutenant and even on a bill that included
Taxi Driver, Mean Streets and Reservoir Dogs, it stood out as something brutal, brilliant, demented and utterly outrageous. Partly that was down to Keitel's off-the-wall performance; mainly it was down to Ferrara's raw directing style. I remember thinking there and then that this was clearly made by someone who didn't understand the concept of playing it safe. That Bad Lieutenant has since become Ferarra's most notorious film – and this from a guy whose earliest days as a run-and-gun New York filmmaker resulted in two genuine exploitation classics: Driller Killer and Ms .45 – is perhaps a sign of how criminally overlooked his previous film, King of New York, was upon its release in 1990. The closest thing he'd done to a mainstream film, this crime epic was shredded by critics and sank at the box-office, yet it remains one of the most hard-hitting gangster films of recent times.
A scuzzy, operatic tale of a drug lord's twisted attempt at redemption, its poor reception may well have pushed Ferarra to unload both barrels with Bad Lieutenant. Then again, is it possible to believe that Ferarra gives a damn about critical respectability? He doesn't. Need evidence? Check out the frank and funny chat track he provides for this special edition King of New York release. Whereas most unappreciated directors use commentaries to guide viewers to a reassessment of their work, Ferarra is blunt about his association with this particular disc: he's only contributing because his producer paid him $5000.
It was a small price to pay given this diamond extra makes the film even more essential. Part hustler, part degenerate punk, Ferarra shows why he's the most rock'n'roll director to have come out of the US, even signing off his highly amusing commentary by belting out an acoustic version of rapper Schooly D's recorded-after-the-fact title song. Chatting about the film, he's belligerent, passionate, hubristic and always willing to say whatever he thinks, consequences be damned. According to the insightful documentaries included here, this is exactly what he's like while working and it shows in the film.
Though grand and ostentatious, it also has a loose semi-improvised quality, full of stolen street shots and wired performances, not least from Christopher Walken. He plays the titular Big Apple kingpin, Frank White, newly released from a long stretch in the clink and ready to take control of the city, appointing himself both its guardian angel and its merchant of death. Confusing greed with altruism, his plan is to eliminate his competition in the drug trade and use part of his subsequent profits to keep an about-to-be-closed hospital open. It's an outrageous proposition and results in a quite astonishing stand-off with a rogue group of cops so frustrated at being handcuffed by bureaucracy that they launch a disastrous attempt to put an end to his reign.
Walken delivers an appropriately strange and menacing turn here, one that actually helped reinvigorate his career, and there's great support too from Laurence Fishburne as his jackal-like right-hand man, Jimmy Jump.
Over the years Ferarra's irascibility has led to plenty of inconsistency – he hasn't done anything of note since 1996's The Funeral – but this proves that when everything comes together, he's a blistering talent.
The full article contains 613 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
