YMMV / Bad Lieutenant

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• Award Snub: Harvey Keitel's performance is one of the best ever put on film and didn't even get an Academy Award nomination.
• He Really Can Act: After seeing him here, you will be genuinely baffled as to why Harvey Keitel has never won an Academy Award. Not that anyone ever really doubted his talent before.
• Genius Bonus: Considering all the Catholic imagery in the film, the climax could count as a "Ray of Hope" Ending since the sinner begs for forgiveness before he dies, which according to the doctrine could earn him a place in heaven.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Co-writer Zoë Lund plays the woman the Lieutenant does drugs with. She had a drug problem in real life, and later died of an overdose in 1999.
• Jerkass Woobie: The Lieutenant. At first glance, he's an absolutely despicable individual with no redeeming features. Then we see the depths of his self-hatred and despair and just how desperately he wishes he could be a good person but feels that God has completely abandoned him.
• Moral Event Horizon: The Lieutenant appears to have crossed his long before the movie starts. In the movie itself, he pulls over a couple of teenage girls and forces them to expose themselves and act out various sexual activities while he masturbates, and ogles a nun who is being medically examined following being gang-raped amongst others, however. That said, he is not a sociopath, he commits his acts not out of pleasure but because he doesn't know how else to act. He is full of deep self-loathing and remorse for what he has done and believes he is beyond any levels of redemption.
• Nightmare Fuel: The rape of the nun. Coupled by a shot of Christ crying out on the cross.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The Lieutenant's breakdown in the church. The character is ripped apart and shown as a human being desperately trying to find some sort of hope for redemption and who feels completely abandoned by any sort of deity.
  • The wordless, anguished wailing coming out of his mouth during that scene (and later on, towards the end of the film) is this on its own.

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