Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | September 16, 2026
How weird is it that Bad Lieutenant, of all films, became the starting point of a cinematic universe? Abel Ferrara and Zoe Lund’s crime drama about a corrupt cop who descends into a hell of his own making is a sleazy tale that has lost none of its power over three decades later. A totally unrelated follow-up was made 16 years later, with Werner Herzog behind the camera and Nicolas Cage chewing everything up in front of it. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans goes for a trippier mood, far more self-consciously bizarre than the original, but still focused on a detective riddled with sins who wonders if he can ever rise above his demons. And also Nic Cage talks to lizards. What other director could take on this story and add their unique spin to it? How about Takashi Miike?
Lieutenant Yakubi (Shun Oguri) of the Tokyo Police is a drug addled gambling addict whose wife has just left him. His debts are mounting up and he has no allies. Even his favourite sex workers seem to view him with pity. As a former investigator into the yakuza, he’s the first person called upon when a tattooed body is found with its face smashed in. There’s also the small matter of a former yakuza and meth addict who’s out of jail and on a vicious rampage. Oh, and now he has to work with an FBI agent (Lily James) who has been tasked with finding a politician’s daughter (Liv Morgan.)
Bad Lieutenant feels more like a direct remake of the Ferrara film than Herzog’s wild experiment. Plot beats between the two are similar, although Miike has always enjoyed the more cartoonish version of violence than the real thing (mostly. I mean, did you see Audition?) The prolific filmmaker is best known to Western audiences for his extremeness, from the blood sprays and snake mouthed villains of Ichi the Killer to the sexual depravities of Visitor Q. There is no such thing as too much in his dozens of films. In this film, violence is not just common but something everyone is capable of committing with absolute force. Regardless of your strength or predilections, you could punch a man’s head off if you were in a Miike movie. The sharp, crunchy sound design drives each hit home with gut-churning potency. Really, this one’s a hell of a lot tamer than some Miike films. Again, Audition. But it’s also still a movie where the bad guy chops up his victims and fashions them into meatballs for the crows to eat.
Our titular bad lieutenant is bad in the typical ways. He neglected his family, throws away his money on dice games, loves a bit of cocaine now and then, and made some good connections with the yakuza. But he seems rather tame compared to the world of organized crime and, again, people who turn humans into meatballs. He’s easily the most likeable of the series’ leads, made roguishly appealing but Shun Oguri (currently starring in Human Vapor on Netflix.) He’s very watchable, and that might be the problem. The entire movie, meatballs aside, is a breeze to sit through.
It is entertaining, especially once Lily James turns up with her wonky Southern accent and plays her character like Blanche from The Golden Girls if she had a gun. Her and Oguri have real heat and they go to town in one nightclub fight scene that ends in primal passion. But the duel serial killer cases are haphazardly resolved and offer little insight into their victims of perpetrators. The original Bad Lieutenant is a deeply Catholic film about redemption and whether or not true untainted goodness can survive amid the rot of violence and degradation. Ferrara and Lund, who wrote the script, don’t have easy answers, especially since the lieutenant himself, played by Harvey Keitel, is such a brutal figure to watch unravel. Yabuki is nowhere near as knotty. The trappings are there but he is miles away from the competition, so when Miike brings in his themes of salvation, the stakes feel far lower for our protagonist. I was somewhat amused by the decision to have meatball man included in that conversation, though. Sure, even he has potential to be decent, right?
When Miike revels in his trademark tastelessness, everything is a blast. Exploding heads! Kinky sex death! Necks broken to 180 degrees! If ever there was a story where he could have gone full gonzo, it’s Bad Lieutenant. Lily James is at least swinging for the fences with her lip-smacking camp performance that feels like it’s primed for a drag show. Alas, the connective tissue in-between these moments is too pedestrian. This is certainly the weakest of the trilogy but there are pleasures to be had. If only it was as bad as it needed to be.
Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo had its North American premiere at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival. It currently does not have a release date but will be released by Neon.
