Takashi Miike has made roughly a hundred films and has never once been accused of subtlety. So when he signs on to direct a movie about a corrupt cop spiraling through Tokyo, you already know what you’re getting. The trailer confirms it. Somebody gets hurt in a way you haven’t seen before, and that’s just the first minute.
The Bad Lieutenant lineage is a strange one. It started as a grim character study about guilt and Catholic suffering. Two decades later it got a sequel that played like a hallucinogenic comedy about a man yelling at reptiles. Both were great, for completely different reasons. Now Miike gets a turn.
His version swaps New Orleans and pre-gentrification New York for Tokyo, which is the smartest possible move. Miike has spent his career finding the rot underneath neon, and Tokyo has more neon than anywhere else on earth. The trailer is wet streets, karaoke booths, and hotel rooms where bad decisions have clearly just happened.
The cop at the center is a mess in the traditional sense. Pills. Debts. A gambling habit. A moral compass spinning like a broken fan. What Miike adds is volume. Where the original was quiet and miserable, this looks loud and miserable. There’s a difference, and it matters more than you’d think.
Will it be good? Genuinely unclear. Miike is one of the least consistent great directors alive. He’ll hand you a masterpiece and then four movies that feel like he made them over a weekend on a dare. The man releases films the way other people post updates. Quality control isn’t the point. Volume is.
What the trailer does sell is atmosphere. The colors are sickly. The synth score sounds like a headache arriving. Somebody laughs at a funeral. It’s the kind of crime movie where the city itself seems to be on something, which has always been his whole deal.
Is there an appetite for another corrupt cop movie in 2026? Sure. Crime never goes out of style, and neither does watching a man destroy himself in a nice suit. The genre’s entire appeal is the slow-motion disaster of a person who should absolutely know better. Bad Lieutenant just makes the disaster faster and weirder.
One warning, though. If you’re expecting a straight remake of the 1992 film, adjust expectations now. The title is basically the only thing being borrowed. Everything else belongs to Miike, which is either the selling point or the dealbreaker, depending on your tolerance for weird.
The trailer closes on a shot that suggests nobody involved is getting redeemed, which is probably for the best. We don’t watch these movies hoping for a happy ending. We watch them to feel slightly worse about humanity for two hours. He’s been providing that service for thirty years and shows no sign of slowing down.
If the movie is a disaster, it’ll be an interesting disaster. If it’s great, it’ll be the kind of great that makes you want to take a shower. Either way, you’re getting something nobody else is making right now. That’s worth something.
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