Bringing Out the Dead

Sometimes you can watch a film and see that all the pieces are there and yet there's still something not quite right about it. 'Bringing Out the Dead' stars Nicholas Cage (while he was still highly-bankable at the Box Office) as a New York ambulance driver who's on the brink of burning out completely. He's seemingly lost the ability to sleep (properly) and turned to various substances to get himself through his - increasingly dangerous - nightshifts.

Now, back in 1999 when this film was released, Cage was pretty much at the top of his game and you could guarantee that he'd put in a good performance, especially under an equally great director. Here we have none other than Martin Scorsese at the helm who is more than capable at keeping hold of Cage's reigns and making sure he doesn't do that 'over the topness' he sometimes slips into. The premise is great and there's plenty of scope for the story and characters to evolve. The films sports an equally impressive supporting cast including Patricia Arquette, Ving Rhames and John Goodman. So, baring all that in mind, it's hard to see that anything could go wrong with it.

I certainly don't hate 'Bringing Out the Dead.' I just feel that with that much talent at its disposal it should be a lot better than it is. The actors and direction are amazing, but where it falls down is a general lack of focus as to where the story is going and what genre the film wants to be. It flips from everything from romantic comedy to gritty drama almost every other scene and even flirts with the possibility of a supernatural element (loosely). There's not an awful lot of motivation for the supporting cast and they just seem to do things to provide Cage with something bad/dramatic to react to. The films plays out like a string of sketches/mini episodes that are loosely strung together by the flimsy of narratives.

If you're a fan of Cage and/or Scorsese, this is a 'must watch.' However, some may get a little tired with waiting for something to happen.

In Bringing Out the Dead, Nicolas Cage plays Frank, a graveyard shift EMT technician in New York City in the early 1990s. In classic Scorsese style, the themes of masculinity, subcultural underground interaction, and fast paced film editing combine to form the frenetic basis of Frank's neo-noir lifestyle. The film is dark, urban, and also blackly comic, relying on strong masculine characters to provide energy and humor.

Overall, Bringing Out the Dead appears to be heavily influenced by film noir. Frank, the protagonist, is at the end of his rope in a rather solitary and stressful job and he often finds escape from the ghosts of his failures through alcohol. Patricia Arquette plays Mary, the femme fatale character and woman in distress Frank seeks to save. The film is uber-urban, set mainly in the nighttime ghettos and hustling districts of New York City, and the major events center around various city dwellers. Frank's adventures in life saving are highlighted by the colorful characters of City life, including prostitutes, drug addicts, homeless persons, insane persons, goth-punk death rockers and the ubiquitous 'Mr. O.,' the smelliest destitute to plague Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy Hospital. Frank is led by Mary into the narcotic underworld, and meets the proprietor of 'The Oasis,' a charismatic dealer with a passion for tropical fish and silk robes.

Many of the lighting techniques also serve to emphasize the urbanality of the surroundings, often combining music and fast paced editing. The darkness of the City night is contrasted with the searing halogen of the hospital, and the sunlight that creeps through the window at dawn mocks Frank's insomnia. Indeed, the movie ends at dawn, with Frank nodding off to sleep. This is very similar to the traditional horror movie ending at dawn when the nighttime monsters are relegated to their nocturnal lairs. Editing techniques are feverish and accelerate in pace as the movie progresses and Frank's hysteria mounts. Many of these sequences involve a montage of the flashing ambulance lights, 360-degree camera rotation, blurred traffic lights and shots of the crazed driver behind the wheel. My personal favorite scene is when Frank is going to answer a call, and the montage is set to R.E.M.'s What's the Frequency Kenneth.

Overall, most of the main characters are the male ambulance drivers/EMTs. These characters, Frank, Tom, Marcus and Larry, exude a kind of unquestioned masculinity, which they prove through various means such as violence, excessive flirting, and alcohol consumption. Tom is a violent, hair trigger macho who enjoys pummeling transients and minorities. Marcus is a smooth talking black man who chain smokes stogies and praises Jesus. Larry is an overweight everyman, wanting to start his own paramedic business. Frank is a Marlboro smoking altruistic cowboy with a drinking problem and insomnia. At some point, most of the characters engage in drinking (liquor) while on duty or at least in the ambulance. The characters names are also quite masculine, especially in contrast to Noel, a man who is a drug addict of ethnic descent that is never arguably fully a man.

Inherently, Scorsese's New York City is an urban jungle that will break any man who is not strong or tough enough.

Frank Pierce is at the end of his rope. As portrayed by Nicolas Cage in Martin Scorsese's "Bringing Out The Dead", he is a burned out, alcoholic, insomniac New York City ambulance driver tormented by the ghosts of those he failed to save -- specifically, the ghost of Rose, a young, asthmatic woman he couldn't "bring back". The movie is basically a snapshot of Frank's life -- three days of hell as seen from his vantage point : a speeding ambulance by which a blurred, uncertain, frightening, and often oppressive world flies.

Frank tells us at the movie's outset that he hasn't saved a life in months, and that he's beginning to believe in things like spirits that leave a body and don't want to come back. He's starting to feel like a "grief mop", like his only real responsibility is to "bear witness" to death and suffering. Frank and his partner Larry (John Goodman) are attempting to resuscitate a heart attack victim as the movie begins, and as the man's daughter Mary (Patricia Arquette) looks on in horror, Larry is successful in pulling him back from death's door. The overrun hospital, however, shoves him into a corner and keeps him drugged up, shocking him back to "life" when necessary. Mary tells Frank she hadn't spoken to her father for a long while before his attack, and in fact had often wished he were dead, but that now there's nothing she'd like more that to just hear his voice again. She was once a junkie but has now been clean for months, she tells him. Frank seems moved by Mary, seems to want to "save" her -- perhaps he thinks if he can save her, he will be able to let go of the pain of losing Rose.

Frank's developing feelings for Mary provide a counterpoint to the insanity he encounters on emergency calls with his partners Larry (John Goodman), Marcus (Ving Rhames), and Walls (Tom Sizemore). Sometimes the calls involve merely picking up the local smelly drunk Mr. O, their "most frequent flier" who seems to think the hospital is a nice place to sober up. Other times they involve matters that are much more serious, like resuscitating a heroin OD in a club (a great scene) or assisting in the allegedly virgin birth of twins (haunting, and one of the movie's many examples of religious imagery). But no matter where Frank goes, he sees Roses' face -- he sees her everywhere, she comes to him in the guise of the nameless street people that cross his path.

There really is no plot to "Bringing Out The Dead", and that's a good thing because the movie isn't meant to be a straightforward narrative. It's meant to be a snapshot of a man's soul, of his inner demons, and a conventional plot would only cloud the movie's real point. The narrative thrust comes mostly from Frank's interactions with his partners -- each of them representing a different approach, a different way of dealing with the pain brought on by this nerve wracking job. Larry (Goodman) seems to be able to block out the emotional aspects of his job, he seems to see his position mainly as a means to an end, and in fact he tells Frank he'll be a captain one day. Marcus (Ving Rhames, in a scene stealing performance) puts all trust and faith in God, believing that if someone dies, it's just their time to go. Walls (a scarily effective Tom Sizemore) is a borderline psychotic, terrorizing patients (including dread locked street person Noel, well played by singer Mark Anthony) and bashing in his ambulance headlights with a baseball bat.

If these three provide the kinetic thrust of the movie, Frank and Mary provide it's emotional center. Frank finds himself drawn closer and closer to Mary, and in fact he tries to rescue her when she resorts to visiting scummy drug dealer Cy Coates (the excellent Cliff Curtis) at the Oasis, a scarily shot urban hellhole that seems to be a local haven for drug dealing. She needs some respite, however temporary and narcotic, from the pain, and in this sense she has a link with Frank (who drinks on the job and taps into his own medical supplies to get high). The movie seems to be saying that these two people need each other; perhaps each has what is needed to soothe the other's hurt.

"Bringing Out The Dead" is the fourth collaboration between Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader, and it touches on their familiar themes of faith, guilt, hope, and redemption. Much has been written about the similarities between this film and "Taxi Driver", Scorsese's 1976 ode to urban rot. I feel these similarities are somewhat superficial. Though Frank and Travis Bickle are both lonely, disenfranchised, ill people, Frank wants to help people; Bickle just wants to clean the "trash" up off the streets. Bickle lashes out in rage; Frank lashes out in fear and desperation. Schrader's screenplay offers satisfying levels of complexity, so that ultimately, towards the end, when Frank does something totally unexpected and morally ambiguous, we understand exactly why he's doing it and can sympathize.

Of course, from a technical standpoint "Bringing Out The Dead" is flawless. Ace lensman Robert Richardson (who previously worked with Scorsese on "Casino") gives the city an appropriately gloomy, sick look, and his work is especially effective in a scene in which Cy dangles from a sixteenth floor balcony while fireworks explode behind him. Thelma Schoonmaker's expert editing is, as usual, outstanding -- she gives the fast paced scenes the charge they need, and provides some dizzying sped up camera effects during the emergency call scenes. Scorsese's choice of music is great, as is his work with the actors. Sizemore, Anthony, Curtis, Arquette, and especially Rhames are all good, but it's Cage who must hold the movie together, and he succeeds with a towering performance that is easily his best work since "Leaving Las Vegas". Cage is cast perfectly here; his tortured, implosive Frank Pierce is an indelible character.

"Bringing Out The Dead" is not for everyone. The movie's lack of a conventional narrative arc will probably confuse and alienate some viewers, and the way it uncompromisingly looks into the darkest corners of human nature with an unflinching eye will disturb others. Yet these qualities are Scorsese's hallmarks, and this film has links to many of his other works -- the confusion of "After Hours", the emotional indecision of "The Age of Innocence", the alienation of "Taxi Driver", the spiritual search of "The Last Temptation of Christ". "Bringing Out The Dead" is not easy to watch, and at times it's hard not to look away. But it's real, and it stays with you.

Director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Shrader, these two names alone stand for excellence and brilliance, put them together and you havebrilliant film making history as witnessed by their former collaborations ("Taxi Driver", "Raging Bull" and "The Last Temptation of Christ"). Add the totally compelling and very real "Bringing Out the Dead" to that list. Based on the novel by Joe Connelly, a former EMS worker, "Bringing Out the Dead" follows three long nights in the life of New York City paramedic Frank Pierce (Nicholas Cage) as he navigates through the life and death situations of the last era of the "mean streets" of New York City, the early 90's, all the while attempting to hold on to his sanity by a thread.

Scorsese creates a very real New York (before the gentrification of the Giuliani era) that is rarely seen in films. This is not the flashy and glitzy New York that is often shown in most movies. He goes deep into the psyche of a city that is crammed with 9 million people, some who are struggling just to stay afloat. As the character Mary says, "You have to be strong to survive in this city." Some of the scenes in the movie are so memorable and haunting such as Frank's hallucination of actually pulling people literally from the steam shrouded pavement and bringing them back to life and the harrowing, almost Christ-like sequence where Frank is saving a drug dealer from death as he dangles from a balcony.

Nicholas Cage, one of our finest actors working today, gives a brilliant performance of great emotional range that is draining to watch. You literally see him coming unglued piece by piece. This is his best performance since "Leaving Las Vegas". Patricia Arquette (Cage's wife) gives a very moving and subtle performance of a person who has been to hell and back while struggling to maintain some balance in the jungle. Goodman, Rhames and Sizemore turn out good performances as always playing Cage's co-pilots in the nightly journeys. Also standing out are Latin singer, Marc Anthony as a homeless crazy and Cliff Curtis as a drug dealer who provides an "oasis" for the stressed-out individuals of the city. An excellent director and a great script are a perfect formula for producing top-notch performances by actors and Scorsese and Shrader bring out the best in theirs.

With it's story of the lead character Frank cruising the streets making narrative comments about life in the city, comparisons will be made naturally to Scorsese's other brilliant work "Taxi Driver" with it's main character Travis Bickle, but those comparisons are normal and stop right there. Where Travis Bickle wanted to save people who did not need saving, Frank Pierce reaches out to people who desperately need saving, but does not always have the power to save as in the case of the homeless girl Maria, who haunts him constantly. Also Scorsese is too highly intelligent, creative and the ultimate professional to retread the same waters, he never takes the easy road. A Scorsese film is like any great film, it takes time to take it in and digest, because there are so many different layers added that need to be looked at long after the last reel finishes. This is a powerful piece of filmmaking proving once again that Martin Scorsese is one of the all-time great directors of this century. Highly Recommended. × × ××

Bringing out the Dead is the most underrated film ever done by Martin Scorsese. It is one of the most well made films I've ever seen and is one of my favorite dramas of all time.

The film focuses on a paramedic called Frank played by Nicolas Cage. The film focuses on 48 hours of Frank's life as a paramedic and all the horrific things he has seen. As well as that Frank is also haunted by spirits of people who he couldn't save, befriends a young women called Mary played by Patricia Arquette and a whole range of strange partners.

The actors that Scorsese has chosen are a weird bunch as they're not really in Scorsese's other films and they're not really big name actors. As well as Nicolas Cage there's also supporting roles from people like John Goodman, Ving Rhames and Tom Siezmore. Everyone does a fantastic jobs even the actors who have much smaller roles than others.

This is much more surreal film than most other Scorsese films as we go into Frank's mind.

The reasons why this films succeeds is just that you really care about this characters and while the film dosen't really have much of a story it grips you the whole way through.

It also has a great soundtrack which includes artists like Van Morrison, R.E.M and the Who.

Overall the film is quite different to what you're usually expecting but it grips who the whole way though and it gets a full 5 star rating form me.