Bringing Out the Dead

Rating:
Summary: "No Particular Place to Go"
Review: "Bringing Out the Dead", directed by Martin Scorsese and from a book of the same name by Joe Connelly, is a mordantly funny and almost plotless look at life on the dark side of the EMT night shift in NYC. Nicholas Cage is Frank, who is excellently cast as a man who is losing his belief in what he is doing and why, and his belief in himself at the same time (he drinks too much and can't sleep at the point where we are thrown into the movie). There is a well written, episodic-like script which portrays the hell that is NY after dark if you are a drug addict, a prostitute, or have a job you can't even quit(like Frank) because they are so understaffed they won't fire you.

If you have ever been a night person, and dread the break of dawn, you will love this movie. Scorsese, with the help of Cage, gets you there.

Rating:
Summary: An almost average movie (being polite)
Review: A story about an overworked and delusional EMT being haunted by a young female who died even after all of his efforts. This movie could have been alot better. There is no way this movie deserves 5 stars. And, I do happen to be a Nicholas Cage fan. The screen play for this movie was really terrible.

Rating:
Summary: true to life.......from a NYC medic
Review: With a few exceptiont (notably substance use in the ambulance AKA "BUS") This film is quite honest. The emotions and "call" portrayals are quite similar to what really occurs on the streets. Unfortunatly a great deal of the public portrays or views paramedicine as simply streatcherbearing as was done in the 1800's.

This is a well acted film which portrays patient advocacy as well as the everpresent and unfortunatly too common medic burnout. The acting is quite good, and considering that the lead characters rode with NYC EMS Medics for some time prior to filming all make this movie more technically correct. I would strongly reccommend this film to all interested.

Rating:
Summary: wow...this is a bad movie
Review: A mood piece..hmmm, well i guess that says it all. If i want a mood piece i'll listen to Eno's The Secret life of plants or that video with the continuous burning log for 2 hours thank you. As a movie, bringing out the dead is horrible. Its a combination of Cops and ER which tries to elevate itself into art with the Madonna-esque MTV video style footage - and portentious voice overs, the result is terrible. I got bored 20 minutes into this movie, waiting for this movie to make a single point, its full of useless racial stereotypes and just totally unrealistic in depciting New York in the early 1990's as the film attempts to do, It would have worked better if this was a story set in the 1970's since it breaks no new ground about New York, ok, lots of violence and hookers - gee, havent we seen this before? in fact if i want "gritty" drama, i think an episode of cops is more enjoyable than watching Nicholas Cage deadpan his way thru this pretentious and boring mess.

Rating:
Summary: Personally, I needed more.
Review: Scorsese's had a bad decade; with *Bringing Out the Dead*, he ends it on a somewhat better note. He really goes back to his *Taxi Driver* roots with this one. The results are mixed, but you can't say that this movie isn't interesting to look at: the cinematographer leached (or bleached) out all colors except red, which does indeed create a hellish-looking Manhattan. The soundtrack, per usual with Scorsese, is excellent.

Wish I could say the same about the story, which is an episodic affair that manically hustles you forward much like the ambulances it portrays. It's about an exhausted paramedic (Nicolas Cage, looking very, very pale -- a case of Marty overdoing it again) who's consumed with guilt because he hasn't saved everyone he's tried to help. I must say there was potential for greatness here, but the narrative is just too randomly limned to encourage much emotional investment. For example, he's relentlessly haunted by a scary-looking young woman (dead, of course -- a spirit, if you will), but the flashback of Cage trying to save her doesn't explain the haunting: he wasn't particularly negligent, or anything. In other words, why her? Or, why not everyone he's lost? Or no one? (There ARE other ghosts, but they don't attempt to make a personal connection with our hero.)

In my opinion, less hyperkinetics and more attention to old-fashioned storytelling would have served this movie very well, but instead we get the (by now tiresome) same old Scorsese boldness, the Scorsese broad strokes, the Scorsese fascination with the lowest common demoninator of humankind, the Scorsese concern with mind-blowing visuals. Too much magic, not enough realism. The subject of this film DEMANDS the latter.

Rating:
Summary: A Blazing Masterpiece
Review: This movie hardly made any money at the box-office. Does that surprise me? No. I've come to realize that people just don't like GOOD movies. This film is completely amazing, from the great acting and brilliant direction. Is the film's basic structure somewhat like "Taxi Driver"? A bit maybe, but that doesn't matter. The whole feel and way the movie jumps with the blazing music is completely different than "Taxi Driver". That is what should matter. Please, watch this movie. It is great.

Rating:
Summary: DOA
Review: On paper, BOTD seems to have everything going for it -- a decent budget, a screenplay by Paul Schrader, a strong cast and one of the most acclaimed directors of all time. It also happens to feature striking cinematography and a few audacious set pieces. And yet it bombed in the theaters for a simple reason: it fails to engage the viewer. The plot of the film is a straight line, with a distinct lack of narrative tension. Nick Cage's blank, shellshocked expressions may properly represent his character's emotional state, but they don't really express anything, and they don't draw us in. As if to compensate for this flatness, the film contains pages and pages of Cage's monotonous and portentous voice-overs, which are mostly irritating. A lingering shot of his character's bookshelf, that allows us to read every spine, is an appalling way to convey to the viewer that he's a "deep" thinker.

There are actually too many appalling things in this film, mostly compromised attempts at solving intrinsic problems in the subject matter. For example, there's the problem of maintaining a coherent story through the inherently random and discontinuous episodes of ambulance driving. Solution: a few recurring characters, the most egregious being a raving lunatic who, except for Cage, appears in more scenes than anyone else in the film, becoming increasingly more annoying with each unlikely encounter.

And then there's the unbelievably heavy-handed religious allegory, culminating in an immaculately-conceived birth. The parents are squatters (no room at the inn, of course), and the mother is named Maria. Jesus.

I don't get it. What possessed Scorsese to fill his film with so much amateurish garbage? And how did he, a native New Yorker, manage to create such a cliched and blatantly unrealistic picture of the city?

I'm generally a fan of Scorsese and Schrader, but this has to be their stupidest and least entertaining film. It's full of hokey philosophizing, but one can't help feeling that they're simply and rather crassly milking the main character's proximity to dying people without having anything interesting to say about it.

Rating:
Summary: Criminally underrated
Review: When it comes to films that get no respect, this one is at the top of the list. As with Casino, many shallow types dismissed this film as Scorsese merely covering the same ground as he had covered in an earlier film. Unfortunately, people are quicker to call a film like this a "ripoff" as opposed to what it truly is - a variation on a theme. The film Bringing Out the Dead is almost always compared to is Taxi Driver, which seems a bit shallow, since aside from a few superficial qualities the films are remarkably different. I'd say this film bears a much stronger resemblence to Scorsese's After Hours or, in terms of visual style, a Wong Kar-Wai film. But those are really superficial comparisons as well. Bringing out the Dead is a film that stands on its own, combining a fierce and questioning spirituality with dark humor, resulting in a masterpiece with a stunningly original tone. This isn't the kind of film that provides any easy answers; rather, it provokes thought about its characters and the environment in which they exist. This is probably one of the few big studio releases I have seen in recent years that is more of an art film than anything else. Maybe the film's experimental and relatively plotless style threw some people. Who knows? But if you have an open mind and love unrelenting and challenging cinema, Bringing Out the Dead is a revelation.

Rating:
Summary: The most underrated film of the year
Review: Bringing out the Dead is the most missed and underrated film of the year. Shockingly though, I found it to be the best film of the year. Veteran director Martin Scorsese goes back to the mean streets of New York, at what he does best, and brings us a masterpiece in the city. This film is a smart, glitzy, fast, modern-day version of "Taxi Driver" mixed with "After Hours". Nicolas Cage gives his best performance yet, portraying Frank Pierce, a burnt-out paramedic cruising the streets of New York, having a breakdown, not being able to save those he let die, and still isn't successful. Paul Schrader's (best collaborator with Scorsese) brilliant script is yet another of damnation and redemption, except it doesn't have a feel of any other of their films. The supporting cast is exceptional, with Marc Anthony as the street psycho, Noel, Ving Rhames as the religion-obsessed ambulance partner of Frank, and Tom Sizemore, as the dangerous, violent partner of Frank. Wittingly funny, chillingly realistic, and hauntingly memorable. Note: much better the second viewing.

Rating:
Summary: Exhilarating And Brilliant.
Review: "Bringing Out The Dead" is the latest from one of the masters of the cinema, Martin Scorsese, and this movie shows him at the top of his form, never lacking energy, style and brilliance. I've admired some of his attempts to break away from his mean streets rep with good films like "Kundun," but the mean streets of New York is his place and never does he fail in "Bringing Out The Dead" to show them in their rage and dark truths. The screenplay by Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, The Last Temptation Of Christ) is brilliant and complex, with great characters and situations. He gives just enough time to each character and non is wasted. Tom Sizemore is especially good as a blood thirsty paramedic. But the best performance here is by the lead, Nicolas Cage, who lets us feel his character's sadness and need for rest, for peace. Schrader's screenplay is sometimes darkly poetic and Scorsese brings it to the screen with pure energy. The movie is never boring, but never dumb either. The cinematography by Robert Richardson (JFK, Natural Born Killers) is rich and exhilarating, he makes New York look like a vision into hell. All the performances are superb, even Marc Anthony's as a junkie. This is a brilliant movie that raises issues, tells a good and emotional story, and brings out the craft and art of good cinema. "Bringing Out The Dead" was one of the best films of 1999 and also Martin Scorsese's best movie since "Casino." Great filmmaking from a master.