FILM / And the beat goes on and on

We have had Kindergarten Cop, we have had Beverly Hills Cop, we have even had Maniac Cop. Now, with Bad Lieutenant (18), Abel Ferrara gives us . . . Crackhead Catholic Cop. We know all about your average run-of-the-mill Hollywood policeman - consumed by his devotion to duty, marriage on the rocks, lonely six-pack in the fridge, tough but basically a decent cove (he would never dream of, say, beating up an innocent black motorist).

In this film, however, Harvey Keitel's anguished lieutenant comes a little closer to what you suspect is reality. His family barely have speaking roles and his icebox is more likely to be stocked with illegal pharmaceuticals. John Thaw's Inspector Morse didn't have a Christian name; Keitel's character doesn't have any name - he's just known as Lt, brutish and short.

You would, however, be very much mistaken in expecting a gritty action piece (an early clue: the press notes are prefaced by a quote from Milton's Paradise Lost). This is a character study with grand pretensions; terms like 'faith' and 'salvation' are in the ring. Long sequences, many filmed in real time and single takes, observe Keitel's character at work and at 'play' - indulging in a three-way orgy, masturbating in front of two teenage girls he has stopped for dodgy driving, pocketing the spoils from drugs raids and later sampling them. A lapsed Catholic, he also spends a lot of time in church, mesmerised by the case of a beautiful young nun who has been violently raped there (Bad Lieutenant is one of several films this week that make church virtually a no-go area). It is clear that we are in the presence of a first-degree spiritual crisis: Keitel is bad because of the scum he consorts with. But he wants to be better.

It all comes to a head when Keitel learns that the nun knows her rapists, but declines to name them: like Jesus, she has already forgiven her aggressors. And he also understands that, instead of turning them in and pocketing the sorely needed reward, he too should allow them to go free with the instruction not to sin again (a sentence that makes pounds 500 fines look positively draconian). Herein will he find his own redemption.

This is bull of a very high order. Ferrara comes from the raffish fringes of film-making (his pedigree includes Driller Killer, Ms 45: Angel of Vengeance and, more recently, King of New York) and the new work's metaphysical aspirations have a hollow ring. But he's also a skilful film-maker, masterly at building character and mood with minimal, understated means. And the nakedness (in both senses) and anguish of Keitel's performance are unquestionable.

A welcome revival of Mean Streets (18), Martin Scorsese's portrait of lowlife in Little Italy, finds a 20-years-younger Keitel back in church, burning his fingers in the candle's flame in paroxysms of guilt over his Mafia connections. It prompts reflections on the contrast between this actor, who continues to produce remarkably audacious but low-profile work (Bad Lieutenant is not Oscar fodder; nor is his role in Reservoir Dogs) and his co-star, a regrettably coiffed Robert De Niro, who now seems to repose on his laurels while tossing out the odd turkey. Not to mention between Scorsese, whose recent work - The Color of Money, Cape Fear - has moved smartly towards the mainstream, and Ferrara, the incorrigible maverick. Mean Streets, however, remains a fine, unexpectedly fresh-looking piece (even the horrible flares are newly modish) - a portrait of a community whose contours are defined by Keitel's list of Favourite Things: spaghetti in clam sauce, Francis of Assisi and John Wayne.

There's little to say about Hellraiser III (18), another Anglo-American horror flick from the Clive Barker stable, except that it is competent and accomplishes the small feat of being better than its predecessor. Its anti-hero, Pinhead, is meant to be a spectacular, witty villain in the Freddie Krueger tradition - but in the wake of the recent 'from-hell' movies, where evil wears a smiley, everyday face, these baroque, Eighties- style baddies (church trauma No 3: Pinhead plunges nails from his face into his hands to create DIY stigmata) are looking decidedly demodes.

Back home after a not-too-successful sojourn in America, the Australian director Gillian Armstrong fields The Last Days of Chez Nous (15). Lisa Harrow is the fulcrum of a mildly bohemian Sydney household, a coping mother figure whose success blinds her to her own benign bossiness; Kerry Fox (the splendid star of Jane Campion's An Angel at My Table) plays her flaky sister; Bruno Ganz her husband, a stage Frenchman complete with beret and stripey T-shirt. The film charts the quietly shifting relationships between this trio, which come to a head when Harrow goes driveabout in the outback to resolve her relationship with her cranky dad. It's a low-key affair, whose refusal to spell out its points too loudly is commendable but also a little unsatisfying - too many details never quite come into focus.

But it looks great compared with Paper Marriage (no cert), a dud retread of Green Card in which beautiful Joanna Trepechinska buys the hand of small-time crook Gary Kemp. The ensuing 'thriller' is set in a dingily filmed Newcastle which would make anyone (especially someone with a gorgeous fox-fur coat and wardrobe to match) wonder why they'd ever left Warsaw.