it's a scorsese rip off to people who don't actually watch scorsese movies.

It was one of Scorsese's favorite movies of the 90's, so he doesn't think it is a ripoff.

"I think youre confusing Scorsese with Paul Schrader".
Huh? Who is? Where?
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

I think you're confusing Scorsese with Paul Schrader.
I don't mean to impose, but I am the Ocean.

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Yeah, it was cool how one scene where Keitel was dancing with some hooker managed to reference two Scorsese movies at the same time - Keitels similarly styled dancing with Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver and the Pledging My Love song from Mean Streets playing over it. Bad Lieutenant generally plays a bit like a twisted, perverted and altogether meaner Mean Streets for the 90s. A lot of it is quite excellent. Outstanding.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

And Scorsese would probably not insert a profanity-laden rap song of the ilk of "Signifying Rapper" by Schoolly D in a scene that is intended to be tender and compassionate - a nun being treated in a hospital after a horrifying attack. (Even though the song was removed from many video and all DVD releases following a copyright infringement suit for sampling Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir", which, incidentally enough, some people also thought that IT was the track being used.)

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This movie is NOTHING like anything Scorcese has ever made except, maybe, Who's That Knocking at My Door, and even that's a bit of a stretch.
The thing so many people ignore about this movie is that it is an art film, not a crime flick. With the exception of Who's That Knocking at My Door, Scorcese has not made any true art films.
Just because there are broad similarities to Scorcese, it features Keitel, has one same song, is set in NYC, this is stylistically totally different from Scorcese.
It's darker, more internal (Scorcese would never have shot the hallucinatory scene with Jesus in the church), and more challenging (I also don't see Scorcese "redeeming" his lead character by having him free two junkie rapists). This was also true guerrilla filmmaking (as in no permits, just shooting), which Scorcese does not do while this also has a much longer ASL (average shot length) then probably any Scorcese film ever as Scorcese tends to cut his films very quickly.
If you want to see true Scorcese plagiarism, watch James Toback's Fingers, which stars Harvey Keitel, and even then, I wouldn't say that automatically discredits the entire. I mean, even Scorcese lifted his style from Goddard.
S.F.W.

Scorsese actually likes this movie and rated it the 5th best movie of the 90s.
Insert pretentious signature here

And it was set and shot in NY too, huh? So was "Mean Streets"! What a biter!

It's the film Scorsese owed to Keiteln but never did, a role la
Travis Bickle
Scorsese in the 90's was another director anyway, much more sophisticated and flamboyant so he could never have made such a gritty film.
"Darth Vader is
scary and I
The God
father"

you forgot to mention
it even had HARVEY KEITEL in it who was also in Mean Streets by scorsese