Reception
Bad Lieutenant has a 76% 'Fresh' rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with 29 positive reviews out of 38. Writing in the New York Times, Janet Maslin praised Ferrara's talent for making "gleefully down-and-dirty films", continuing, "He has come up with his own brand of supersleaze, in a film that would seem outrageously, unforgivably lurid if it were not also somehow perfectly sincere." Desson Howe called the Lieutenant "a notch nicer than Satan" in the Washington Post, and he cites Keitel's work as the film's saving grace, "It is only the strength of Keitel's performance that gives his personality human dimension.".
Mark Kermode has mentioned that the film was praised as "a powerful tale of redemptive Catholicism". Roger Ebert stated that "in the Bad Lieutenant, Keitel has given us one of the great screen performances in recent years". Martin Scorsese named this movie as the fifth best movie of the 1990s.
Read more about this topic: Bad Lieutenant
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)