Dérapages

"Broken Vessels" tells of a rookie EMT who teams up with an experienced and opportunistic partner who makes his own rules of how to paramedic in the streets of Los Angeles. A journeyman film at best, "BV" is not so much a story as it is a low credibility exposition of the more unusual and peculiar situations paramedics might encounter. Works better as an action flick than a drama.

This is a neat little movie with a lot of energy and control - it's not overly flashy or gimmicky and doesn't indulge in excessive Tarantino-aping; the Field character is truly sleazy, but the movie keeps everything within plausible limits of degradation and loss of control, so that his pull on London is easy to understand without losing moral perspective. It's a two-hander at heart, but through various secondary characters - especially Field's Gramps, a hopeless drug addict - it manages to carve out a plausible broader social base (even if you wonder how the guys ever manage to get through any of their shifts intact). Some of the specific exposition is tedious, or overly familiar and dutiful, or just marginally amusing, but the meat of it lies simply in colourful incident, and in that regard it has real panache and sense of character.

I felt that this movie is well made. It is hardcore and in your face about the seriouse issues that it deals with. It doesn't exploit them or make fun. It has humor in the right places, not in the wrong places. The acting is great and the production is good to. Definitely a good movie. ***

In my job as a guitar teacher, I come in contact with many kids who are at the place in their lives where they are very impressionable and often have a glamorized view of drug use. I have shown this movie to several kids as an example of how drug abuse can get out of control in a hurry and ruin lives. I point out that the main character, Tom, had no intention of becoming an addict, but before he knew it, he had become one, and it was a short ride to hell from there. This movie makes this point without seeming like a health class documentary. The kids I've shown it too seemed to get the message. I give this movie a high rating, if for no other reason, because it helps me to possibly save the kids from becoming what I myself had once been.

I was floored by this movie. Having spent seven years in various Washington state prisons alongside the disenfranchised casualties of the idiotic and doomed "war on drugs",I am no stranger to the deleterious effects of drug abuse and I thought this movie was one of the very few anti-drug movies that really got the message across without preaching or appearing to glamorize drugs. Jason London quite impressed me with his portrayal of a small town innocent corrupted by big city vices. But the film belongs to Todd Field; he gives an Oscar-worthy performance.This is a classic, really. Right up there with Dugstore Cowboy.