I understand that Bad Lieutenant was critically acclaimed, New Orleans is a potentially compelling location post-Katrina (though what this movie has to do with New Orleans past or present I have no idea), corrupt cop movies are interesting to some people (though I think it's been sufficiently overplayed that you'd have to be Ridley Scott and doing American Gangster for the take to feel new), yadda, yadda, yadda. But this just looks terrible. And by that I mean it looks generic. This doesn't look like New Orleans. Back pain as an excuse for drug addiction is just weak and unimaginative. There are a lot of studio-lot bland interchangeable tough-looking black people in threatening roles. When you're reduced to having this exchange between Nicholas Cage and Val Kilmer, you're reaching: "What are these iguanas doing on my coffee table?"
"There ain't no iguanas." Ditto with using a line like "Shoot him again, his soul's still dancing," to indicate some kind of darkness.
Maybe it's just that Nic Cage is so inherently ridiculous these days that the project never could have seemed credible with him in the lead. Maybe the trailer's terrible. But this looks like a weird, shallow, boring project. In other words, things Herzog is not. So why'd he join it? And why did it turn out this way?