Asphalt City

Ollie Cross (Tye Sheridan) is a rookie paramedic in the chaotic New York City. Gene Rutkovsky (Sean Penn) is his world-weary veteran partner. Lafontaine (Michael Pitt) is another paramedic and Chief Burroughs (Mike Tyson) is their commander.

Tye Sheridan is a great young actor. Sean Penn is solid. I can't see Mike Tyson as anything other than Mike Tyson. I want a real actor in that role. Why not have Mike Tyson play Mike Tyson in one of the emergencies instead. He could be punching out a guy.

This is a lot of crazy emergencies all jammed into a two hour movie. I would have preferred a single-night story. Single-night stories can have the intensity of time. This is going for hyper dynamic story telling. I get it. I'm not generally against it but it does seem over the top. One can excuse it since the story is told over a long time. All this craziness wears me out in a two hour movie. Otherwise, it's fine.

It's atmospheric, slow, dark. All the things that a good and bloody drama should be.

Perfectly cast with some great acting and not too over the top. Even the legendary Mike Tyson makes an appearance which, even though questionable as a casting, he pulls it off perfectly.

Thrown in at the deep end, the main protagonist, a rookie paramedic is on the verge of madness. The film shows exactly what emergency workers have to attend to, day in, day out, and how it affects them, bustling on the verge of madness and faced with the adversity of violence.

It certainly packs a punch. Known as 'Black Flies' in the UK. Give it a watch.

There is absolutely no doubt that 'Black Flies' is a grim movie. I confess I hadn't even heard of it and it seems to have slipped under the radar but for all of it's gloom and doom it is well worth watching. One thing the movie does very well is to make the viewer fully aware of just how horrendous being a paramedic can be and boy will you respect them more after this.

This is a well acted film with the two leads showing good chemistry and at times some ad-libbing if I'm not mistaken. One thing I absolutely hated though is the totally unnecessary nudity from one actress which added nothing to the movie apart from cheap thrills. It got to the stage where I was actually yelling at the screen 'put some cloths on love for crying out loud'. Rant over, this is a good effort, bleak but pretty decent.

As someone who does this for a living, this was pretty close to the mark. Although the amount of tragedy and grief we see the protagonist experience in his first few weeks is somewhat more than a senior paramedic would see in an entire career, it was necessary in order to tell the story and depict what EMS workers go through in a two hour time limit. Yes, some scenes were exaggerated, but it is no secret that over a career as a paramedic, these are things you WILL see, for sure. Legitimately.

The acting was absolutely superb - on all accounts. The chemistry between Tye Sheridan and Sean Penn was incredible. Sean Penn did such a good job here, he really sold his role with Rutkovsky. Tye Sheridan was a fantastic protagonist who really captured the truth of what it feels like starting in EMS in NYC. The place really is a jungle out there. Direction was great. A near perfect film - just some minor gaps in the story telling that , honestly, I forgot about.

I'm not sure how this movie has a low score. This was a very solid 8/10, IMO.

I can't tell if that's a step up for Mike or a step down for Sean Penn. Unfortunately for Penn, I need to say the latter. This movie came and went without any promotion for it, despite what a great film it is. Tye Sheridan got to flex his acting muscle sparing with Sean Penn and of course Mike Tyson, who was fit for the role so it made sense. The film kept reminding me of the Martina Scorsese film Brining up the Dead, which starred Nicolas Cage in a role similar to Sean Penn, in fact, the concept of both movies almost makes Asphalt City a sequel. It does not help that there are not enough movies about the subject to think otherwise.

Anyway, this movie is too good to be hidden away like it seems to be.