The site's critics consensus reads: "Bad Lieutenant will challenge less desensitized viewers with its depiction of police corruption, but Harvey Keitel's committed performance makes it hard to turn away."[17] Writing in The New York Times, Janet Maslin praised Ferrara's talent for making "gleefully down-and-dirty films", continuing, "He has come up with his own brand of supersleaze, in a film that would seem outrageously, unforgivably lurid if it were not also somehow perfectly sincere."[18] Desson Howe for The Washington Post called the Lieutenant "a notch nicer than Satan", and he cites Keitel's work as the film's saving grace, "It is only the strength of Keitel's performance that gives his personality human dimension."[19]