Another movie that gets high marks by the critics, and I simply didn’t get it.

Ok, Nicolas Cage does an excellent job here, as good as he did in Leaving Las Vegas. The story plays in New Orleans shortly after Katrina. Directed by Werner Herzog, Cage plays a corrupt detective in the bad streets of New Orleans. His job is to uphold the law, yet he sees the law simply as his license to fulfil his own needs. He is a drug addict, alcoholic and rapist. He victimizes everyone he comes across, lies to his partners and superiors and apparently drifts through the days in a living hell, day after day.

But why was I watching?  There was no suspense, no real plot or story. Watching this movie was like eating a full Costco bag of corn chips in one session. There is one more chip after every other chip, and the salt, or whatever it is that’s in the chips, keeps you eating. This movie goes on, scene after scene, and you figure out that there is nothing coming but more of the same despair, hopelessness, hunger for more without knowing for what.

Eventually, 121 minutes after it starts, it ends. I sit down quickly and write these paragraphs, because I know that tomorrow I won’t care enough to collect my thoughts.

Rating: *