4. Harvey Keitel - Bad Lieutenant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qI60RZ0Gr4 Whoever decided to cast Harvey Keitel in Abel Ferrara's masterful cop drama Bad Lieutenant - recently remade by Werner Herzog, starring Nicolas Cage - deserves a medal of some kind, because it stands as easily Keitel's best performance to date, in what even without his contributions would probably have been a great film; with him, it is excellent. Ferrara's parable about Catholic guilt culminates in the fraught scene above, with a tearful, browbeaten Keitel confessing that he has lead an ill life replete with moral transgression, begging God to forgive him for all that he has done. While it achieves emotional resonance in light of all the drug-taking and naked cavorting we see him partaking in throughout the film, there's no denying the absurdity of the turn, completely invested in the madness, such that it becomes weirdly believable. Keitel, usually more subdued than this, gets to harness his inner-Joe Pesci with electrifying results.
Shaun Munro
Contributor
Frequently sleep-deprived film addict and video game obsessive who spends more time than is healthy in darkened London screening rooms. Follow his twitter on @ShaunMunroFilm or e-mail him at shaneo632 [at] gmail.com.
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