Rating: 
Summary: People contemplating renting this DVD SHOULD!
Review: People stayed clear of this Nicholas Cage film for the same reason it did so poorly at the box office; it wasn't The Rock, Con-Air, or even 8MM. There's a good reason for that; this isn't a Nick Cage film, it's a Scorcese film, and that makes all the difference in the world.Though sometimes known for his tough, gritty films such as Taxi Driver & Raging Bull,a Scorcese movie is never a simple action movie that panders to the masses. He's a thought provoker. This movie is a prime example. What is Cage looking for as the insomniac EMT? What is the meaning he's searching for that will ultimately change his life (hopefully for the better)? And what better place to look than on the familiar NY Scorcese streets? This is a nicely paced, intelligent, sometimes funny(ironic funny)film. The problem that I saw with it, however, was the film's inability to really bring this film to a satisfactory conclusion. Its not clear that Cage is redeemed, or has indeed found what he's looking for. Even in Taxi Driver and King of Comedy, at least the lives of Travis Bickle & Rupert Pupkin came to some kind of climax, and they had some sense of closure. I never felt it with this film. But Cage's character was suppoesd to be a little truer to reality. And isn't that just life?
Rating: 
Summary: Exhilirating and exhausting
Review: In a offhand sort of way this is kind of like "Aliens", a movie that just grabs you by the throat and never lets go. Its a movie dripping with offbeat, genuinely good performances, technical film virtuosity and rife with metaphor, religious symbolism and imagery (just check out the ending). Nicholas Cage plays an ambulance driver who more or less retells several of the worst days of his life as an EMT. He is in the business of saving lives, but business has been really bad lately. In particular one lost patient, named Rose, haunts his nightmares - both in dreams and waking. Cage seems to be one of those actors that you love or hate, and is equally capable of overacting monsterously or nailing it right on the head. Here, he takes us willingly into the hell that is early 1990s New York City. This is a dark, frightening, neon-lit place, scarier than any vision of hell I have ever seen. He constantly tightropes the line between total of insanity and total detatched apathy. He had me a believer from moment one. I can't even begin to tell you how strong the supporting cast is - Tom Sizemore and Ving Rhames in particular shine here, but they are all just so good, you could pick names out of a hat. This movie is scary, funny, and moving all in the same package. It takes you up and down so many times that, like the hero, all you want to do is sleep it off. Its easily amongst the best films Martin Scorsese has ever directed. Like the best heavily psychological movies (Jacob's Ladder, Naked Lunch, Natural Born Killers) it gives you something far greater in the absence of a coherent plotline - it gives you a state of mind, real, raw emotions that you can connect to, scenes of trauma featuring unforgettable characters that are almost too loony to be just characters in a movie (as it turns out, its based on the memoirs of a real EMT). Finally, its filmed with cinamatography that just goes balls-out - wierd camera angles, fantastic conceptual shots - there's one amazing scene where Cage is riding off of the false resolution of his central crisis. As the camera pulls away from his face you can see the falseness of his jolity, and then it turns to what he is watching - every single passerby's face morphs into that of the patient that he lost. I can't remember the last time when a movie moved me to tears. It resonates with the boundless enthusiasm and passion of someone who wants to tell you about all of the potential of film as an art form, and then proceeds to sing an operetta about the whole truth right into your ear. Its an aimless film that yet somehow never manages to waste a moment, word, thought or image, and one of the finest examples of cinema I have ever seen.
Rating:
Summary: Can't get enough!
Review: I've watched this movie dozens of times, and it never gets old. I love the music, the camera angles, the way it makes you feel like you're some rag doll being dragged around the city by this crazed EMT. Forget it's got Nicolas Cage and that he did Gone In Sixty Seconds and Con Air; this one will make up for the others, and then some. So, turn off the mobile phone, put the kids to bed, make some strong coffee and sit down to fully enjoy this piece of fine work.
Rating:
Summary: Scorses and Cage Make Art
Review: Martin Scorses and Nicolas Cage (Cage in his best role yet) make a piece of art in Bringing Out the Dead. The movie actually follows Nicolas Cage over a three day period, where he makes numerous paramedic trips around town. This is mainly about it, and what he goes through during these three days. Most bad reviews complain that this is plotless, but they should look deeper, and under all the plotless outside, there is a rich storyline. Much like Taxi Driver, Cage is on the verge of a mental breakdown, and is looking for a reason to quit his job. He really has a lonely job, where he mostly only talks to patients and rarely his friends. This movie is a realistic view at a paramedic's job, and a realistic view of a real person. Cage's character will be in your mind for a while. The DVD itself is pretty good (I'd say average for DVD standard). It has a nice featurette, trailers, anamorphic wide screen presentation, and great digital sound (The crazy sound track by the way fits right in with the movie). For those of you who liked the movie, enough to buy, you should because the DVD is fine in itself. Haven't seen Bringing Out the Dead? Don't see it if you are looking for an entertaining movie (Although at the end, you feel fullfilled, it's not the average type of film), look away. To anyone looking for a piece of art, like lets say a P.T. Anderson movie, or any Scorses fan, go see Bringing Out the Dead. It's not so artsy and plotless to be a Blair-Witch Project type, but I would say it's a messier Magnolia without ensemble. It's wonderful and you will be thinking about it for a while to come. This is my review, if you found it helpful on your decision to buy or watch Bringing Out the Dead, feel free to hit the helpful button.. Please, if you're a mainstream movie lover, if you are looking for Gladiator, or The Patriot, don't see this movie.. It is a masterpiece by Scorses, and his artistic vision may not appeal to everybody. **Cage fans steer clear unless you wanna see what I described above** Guy
Rating:
Summary: "I got the will to drive myself sleepless"
Review: "Bringing Out the Dead" is an exhausting, hyperactive film about a paramedic's three blood-soaked nights Hell's Kitchen--sirens ring through the city's dead air with a throbbing, kinetic energy like the movie itself (which pulsates with life), a Martin Scorsese masterpiece of torment & redemption photographed passionately in muted reds and bright shinning white tones. The streets are crammed with half-dead souls that peer up at our sapped hero with sick, sad, sinister eyes as he scurries under streetlamp light searching out the dead. Though the streets are occasionally quiet you can sense another drug overdose or homicide is right around the corner. Frank spends these still moments in front of the hospital--"Perpetual Misery" as the paramedics call it--talking with Mary, a druggie and daughter of an earlier heart attack victim, managing weary smiles and easy conversation over coffee. Mostly he's rushing in ambulances through the numbing nights at breakneck speeds to the next situation. His sanity deteriorates throughout the picture until he's seeing the ghostly face of a young girl called Rose on every corner, behind the mask of every monster. Frank has the somnolent, heavy eyes of an insomniac. He looks ready to snap or collapse at any moment and his co-pilots are of no help to him--they offer him no sanctuary, no place of rest. The first, Larry played by John Goodman is more concerned about what's for dinner than he is with any patient. He's like a taxi driver who ignores the drunk couple having sex in the backseat of his cab. Then there's Marcus (Ving Rhames at his best & most vibrant), a gospel-preaching, cigar-chewing, Motown-smooth brother who, in one of the best and more humorous sequences turns an overdose into a resurrection--proof of the Lord's power. On the 3rd day (and by now Frank's hallucinations are driving him mad), he rides along with Walls (Tom Sizemore), who is a real nut job & gets his pleasure in much the same way as the characters in "Fight Club" get theirs--beating people senseless and breaking things. Meanwhile there is a general hysteria throughout the entire movie: --the emergency room is constantly crowded with sufferers, the night oozes blood & street corner radicals shout their words at the dead--babies are born into existence while other less fortunate people suffer heart attacks in homeless tunnels. Frank observes it all, plunging himself into the Hell waters hoping to cleanse his conscious and receive pardon from his torment. He seems to be doomed and made to drift in and out of his ghost dreams-- The ghost Rose asks, "Why did you kill me, Frank?" We learn she died on the sidewalk in the snow--Frank couldn't save her. He looks worse & worse. At one point he finds himself at the Oasis, a drug lord's city high-rise apartment that's a haven for the weary hallway-shuffling sleepwalkers like Frank. He goes there to help Mary one evening and instead ends up swallowing a sedative of some sort offered to him by Cy (Cliff Curtis, "Three Kings"), and has a vision of himself literally bringing out the dead from beneath the concrete which made me think: "All those lost souls ... Rabbits in your headlights." Frank's obsession pries at his mind, he, like the 19th Century author Gogol is as near to death and madness as a human being can come without losing it--Gogol eventually did lose it and died. Frank seeks shelter from his thoughts in the company of Mary--with her there's a tired gleam left in his eyes. With him, she has someone to trust and someone that'll listen to her fears. Their souls seem to be locking hands without their knowing it. They need each other the same as John C. Reilly and Melora Walters need each other in "Magnolia." When I saw "Bringing Out the Dead" for the first time in theaters I was so mentally & emotionally drained I couldn't gather my thoughts to speak until much later, in the car, where I rolled down the window in the backseat and let the cool night breeze blow in my face and took long deep breaths of the icy air. The words of a song kept playing in my mind: "I got the will to drive myself sleepless" Like Jack, the narrator of "Fight Club," Frank cannot sleep. The difference is, while Jack quells his pains by leaching off the suffering of others so he can rest at ease (at one point he even says, "babies don't sleep this good."), Frank suffers because of it. In one scene he delivers a stillborn baby in a crack house--Marcus delivers a healthy baby boy. Roger Ebert made similar comparisons in his review which I read when the movie opened. Seeing it for the second time at home I was surprised at the number of ways you could contrast the two films. The creators of the film, Martin Scorsese & writer Paul Schrader have made a tireless and religious film about human anguish and the coffee-nerved nights of a Manhattan ambulance driver. Reading my book tonight, I came across this line: "He who, by causing pain to others, wishes to obtain pleasure for himself, he, entangled in the bonds of hatred, will never be free from hatred." Frank's job is never done, even after the movie ends Frank will continue to battle his demons, but for a perfectly serene and beautiful moment and if only for fifteen minutes he sleeps "the sleep of the justified."
Rating: 
Summary: THIS MOVIE....
Review: ....intociates you, i can see why sober minded or un open minded people out there might not appreciatte the intense choice of scenes and the beautiful musical score which sets the scene.....its a piece of art...awesome movie...bravo!!!
IMAGERY + MUSIC + DIALOG + GOOD ACTING=a good movie. It doesnt have to make sense, use your brain and interpret it for yourselves, and enjoy the ride along the way...dont take it to serious.
Rating:
Summary: A FILM THAT DEFIES GENRE (SADLY, IT ALSO DEFIES A PLOT)
Review: As always with Scorsese "Bringing out the dead" has a shimmering technical finish, an overlay of dark humor, strong supporting performances and a splendid star cast: Cage plays a worn-out NYC paramedic with an appealing world-weariness and intensity. You could nearly suspect that he was himself one of the "Dead". Yet, the whole movie never really caught my attention as I waited and waited and waited for something to really happen. Despite some interesting vignettes from people's lives in NY, many of which are repeated again and again, the film is never really engaging, possibly because the characters are never especially believable. The crux of Cage's character's emotional ordeal -- why he became a paramedic, why he stays one, why he feels such smothering personal guilt -- somehow gets lost amid all of Scorsese's camera tricks and Schrader's cheap laughs. Brilliant production values, boring overall output.
Rating:
Summary: It Captures the Surreal Nature of Emergency Work
Review: I've shown this film to friends and family beofre with mixed results. Most people not in the medical (and especially emergency medicine) fields are offended or frightened or take ti too seriously. It is a surreal, somewhat heavy, but, ultimately, funny movie about the unreality that developes over years of working the graveyard shifts and dealing with the weirdest of humanity. What people must understand is that at 0300 everything is weird because human beings get distorted at that hour -- we, the healers, are exhausted (no matter how many years you do this) and the patients, for various reasons, are irrational -- pain, drugs, death. The "normal" people aren't up at that hour, only us denizens of the shadows.
Cage does an over the top performance in an exagerated movie about a burnt-out paramedic trying to save himself and his shreds of humanity by saving somebody -- anybody. His colleagues are even weirder than he is -- the reformed alcoholic lothario, the fat partner happily munching his way across the burroughs of New York, the psychotic EMT who hurst more patients than he helps. Through it all is the sense of Cage's character trying to retain some shred of normal humanity and sympathy. This is a blindingly colorful movie with a killer soundtrack -- like a sadistic trip through Wonderland. Take the ride if you want to see how your medical friends feel. (p.S. My personal favorites are the drug dealer and the triage nurse.)
Rating: 
Summary: what is this?
Review: Nicholas Cage is a great actor. I admit that but this movie has so many flaws i can't list them in one review. it's just really crappy.
Rating: 
Summary: A Feel-Bad Movie
Review: One star, because that's the minimum. Another star just for my profound respect for Mr. Scorsese's name. If you've thought a director as great as Martin Scorsese could not shoot a film without a plot, you're welcomed to watch this rambling, mumbling, down-and-out "docudrama" about ... what else, how terrible the life of a night-shift paramedic and ambulance driver in NYC is (surprise!). You are also welcomed to watch this sorry product if you've ever considered driving a night-shift ambulance in NYC as a glamorous job. Nick Cage and John Goodman wasted their talents just for Scorsese's sake driving around the rainy mean streets of the Big Apple for two hours among ghosts, hookers, suicidal maniacs, nightmares, and basically the assorted filth and rejects of NYC while smoking profusely like the proverbial chimney. Patricia Arquette should've saved her razor sharp acting to another movie worthy of her talent. And the only way I can explain to myself the presence of appropriately-volatile Tom Berenger in this flick is that, just like Cage and Goodman, he also couldn't say "no" when he got that phone call from Mr. Scorsese. Just as there are "feel-good movies", this goes to show that when you are a famous director you are entitled to shoot a feel-bad movie as well. Recommended for those who are trying to bring themselves down on any day or night of the week.
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