Pledging My Love

How bad is Bad Lieutenant? One might reckon its offenses: rape, desecration, the titular hero jacking off in front of teenage girls… the sort of stuff called unforgivable. In 1992 an NC-17 rating certified the film as hard to watch; for some years it has felt almost unwatchable. Perhaps, then, Abel Ferrara’s feel-bad fantasia is what it was said to be: smut made on smack, a scandalous obscenity that dares us to look away and declare it unbearable.