However, in the past year there's been a healthy
return to form with two mesmerising, blistering turns in Matthew Vaughn's
Kick - Ass, where he plays a softly spoken (shock) masked avenger, and in Werner Herzog's delirious Bad Lieutenant, where he plays a New Orleans cop who starts out as a cocky, sharp - suited, wisecracking law enforcer and spirals —
via his crack and painkiller addiction — into a depraved sinner, lurching from one unruly scenario to the next.