Even by the scuzzy standards of Abel Ferrara’s filmography, Bad Lieutenant is particularly filthy.

| Jun 5, 2024

[Keitel] keeps us watching his descent without wanting to look away. Only an actor with tremendous reserves of power could accomplish that.

| Jan 8, 2019

It's a powerhouse performance in a film of jabbing intensity and wit.

| Jan 8, 2019

This is bull of a very high order.

| Nov 13, 2017

Ferrara was in the right place at the right time to make Bad Lieutenant.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 5, 2009

Members of the gutter-al elite will be the sole survivors.

Full Review | Apr 9, 2008

Keitel is onscreen for pretty much the entire movie and clearly relishes the opportunity of playing someone not so much teetering on the abyss as leaping off with a grand piano manacled to each ankle.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 9, 2008

Quite possibly Ferrara's finest hour, with an almost unbearably sincere performance from Keitel.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 9, 2008

Bad Lieutenant is finally a pulp parable of sin, addiction, and redemption, a movie that, like its subversive hero, revels in the pleasure -- and danger -- of going too far.

| Original Score: A- | Apr 9, 2008

Abel Ferrara's uncompromising Bad Lieutenant is a harrowing journey with a corrupt N.Y. cop sinking into the lower depths.

| Apr 9, 2008

There's an undeniable formal elegance in the way Ferrara, who coauthored the script with Zoe Lund, frames and holds certain shots, and Keitel certainly gives his all.

| Apr 9, 2008

[Ferrara's] crowning achievement.

| Original Score: A | May 5, 2006

Ferrara allows his star to dictate the pace, and is rewarded with a performance of extraordinary, terrifying honesty.

| Jan 26, 2006

When Abel Ferrara calls something bad, better believe it: he means business.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 20, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 24, 2002

What it lacks in charm, it compensates for with audacity and single-mindedness of vision.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 1, 2000

Harvey Keitel plays this man with such uncompromised honesty that the performance can only be called courageous; not many actors would want to be seen in this light.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 1, 2000

This punishing film from director Abel Ferrara is something else altogether -- an illuminating, excoriating descent into the cesspool of sin, self-loathing and defilement. This is not an easy film to watch.

| Jan 1, 2000

It doesn't take five minutes for us to understand the depth of his immorality. But the movie proceeds to outline his badness.

| Jan 1, 2000

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 20, 1992