Bringing Out the Dead

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Summary: The world needs to recognize subtle genius
Review: America was to hard to to unkind with it's ideas surrounding Bringing Out the Dead .

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Summary: well intentioned but rambling film
Review: The filmmakers responsible for 1976's classic film `Taxi Driver' - writer Paul Schrader and director Martin Scorsese - return to their roots, in both milieu and style, in `Bringing Out the Dead,' a film that, unfortunately, fails to replicate the quality of the earlier work.

In this new film, instead of the taxi cab driver, Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), serving as our escort through the dank city streets of Manhattan's seedy underbelly, we have ambulance driver, Frank Pierce, pretty much fulfilling the same purpose. Burnt out and emotionally on the edge, Pierce, much like Bickle, becomes a study of a tightly wound coil waiting to be sprung. However, `Taxi Driver' was a highly structured narrative, filled with dramatic contrasts, which explored the progression of a man's mind into madness as a response to the inexplicable yet overwhelming brutality and ugliness of the world around him. `Bringing Out the Dead' pretty much wants to achieve the same goal, yet it dilutes its effectiveness by settling for a pseudo-documentary style that ultimately weakens the overall thrust of the film. The dramatic monotony sets in early on as the film becomes basically a sequence of rambling, loosely related crises and hallucinogenic visions, barely held together by Pierce's portentous and often pretentious voice-over observations.

The core of the film is a sound one. Scorcese forces us to stare unblinking at a world in which woefully understaffed emergency rooms and overworked EMT teams must contend with a literal war zone of wounded and broken bodies, often a result of self-destructive behaviors the roots of which are lodged far deeper in the psyche than even the physical manifestations would indicate. It is, indeed, a horrifying vision that is put before us and the filmmakers capture it with an undeniable immediacy and realism. Yet, the flatness of the film's dramatic structure creates a backlash in the audience; after two solid hours of staring into the face of all this physical and emotional agony, we would like to feel somehow illuminated as to the why and wherefore of it all. We know that we are supposed to see Pierce as a lost soul, a man driven by the intense stress of his job to question the value of life and the effect he can really have on all these suffering, tortured individuals, yet, somehow, he never fully engages us in the way that Travis Bickle does. Perhaps, Nicolas Cage's single expression of hangdog misery prevents us from seeing the complexity behind the facade. Unlike with Bickle, who seemed stuck in his own private hell, we wonder, perhaps irreverently, why Pierce doesn't just quit and find another line of work if he is so unhappy. In addition, the film portrays the protagonist's troubled conscience in the most stereotypical of ways - in the form of visions Pierce periodically has of the face of a young woman who died while under his care.

The echoes of `Taxi Driver' become almost crushing in their effect. In addition to the endless shots of the filthy city streets glimpsed through the windows of a moving vehicle, the main character even shares Travis' obsession with enacting a heroic rescue for an urban damsel in distress. He also achieves emotional catharsis by stepping in to perform the God-like act of deliberately taking a life - albeit in a much less violent fashion here.

Patricia Arquette brings a quiet dignity to her role as the one source of light and happiness in Pierce's bleak world. Their scene together in the hospital waiting room, as they gently bare their wounded souls to each other, is the most effective and engaging in the movie. Thus, for all its admirable attempts at documentary realism, the film turns out to be at its most compelling when it follows the tried-and-true path of basic character-driven drama. `Bringing Out the Dead,' despite the best of intentions, ranks as one of the lesser works in the Scorsese canon.

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Summary: truth revealed!
Review: if you work in the healthcare industry in any capacity this movie is a true delight! if you are not a healthcare worker and just want to be entertained while finding out the true state of affairs in healthcare, this movie is especially for you! nicholas cage is at his best in this movie. i will see this one again.

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Summary: Much underrated movie!
Review: Being a Nick Cage fan, I saw this over the weekend and it just blew me away. Taking turns being hysterically funny (his conversations in the ambulance with his various partners cracked me up) to being dead (no pun intended) serious about the horrible working conditions paramedics and hospital personnel face every day and night in the inner city of New York made me want to cry.

Great movie, highly recommended. Even if you are not a Nick Cage fan, see it anyway. Everyone else in the movie is fabulous as well.

Good job Mr. Scorsese. Your best in years!

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Summary: By far the worst movie that I have ever seen.
Review: The movie had absolutely no point. Never mind buying it, but I regreted renting it. I fastforwared the whole tape. I am a big fan of movies and especially Nicolas Cage's but this was low.

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Summary: Complex and Powerful
Review: Bringing Out The Dead... a movie that leaves you cold, hungry and seemingly alone. At least, that's what I felt from it. Martin Scorcese proves his power as a great director in this film, bringing out the powerful acting of Nicholas Cage, Ving Rhames, John Goodman, and even the young man that played Nols, the psychotic homeless man that is in desperate need of water. The plot is twisted and sometimes over-complicated, but it leaves you with some powerful feeling of how life is in New York as an EMT. The voices add another level to the movie and, along with the incredible cinematography, this movie definitely is a JUST BUY. Of course, if you like happy-happy movies that end with a Hollywood ending (read: Happy, "let's all go off to the sunset" ending), don't watch.

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Summary: The Video and Audio transfer were excellent.
Review: The video and audio transfer were very well done.

I really enjoyed this movie. If you have ever worked in EMS you will recognize someone. I would recommend this film to you.

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Summary: Hypnotic, Almost Epileptic
Review: I must confess that I have never been a great fan of Martin Scorsese, but this movie blows the door wide open. Its frenzied, frayed pace, redolent with hard-hitting social and moral commentary, and specially blended with deft, wacky, dark humor brews a potion that is incredibly tasty. No movie I know of demonstrates as brilliantly the fundamental absurdity of contemporary existence.

Some reviewers claim the lack of a plot, but that is most definitely false. Analysis of the film will reveal conflict, development, and resolution as the main character struggles with death and comes to realize its necessity. This is my crackpot theory: I believe that the film was deliberately engineered to barrage the brain and induce a mild, sympathetic, yet disorienting hypnotic state. When you snap out of it , you have to ask yourself "What happened?". It takes repeated viewings to overcome this effect and gain greater appreciation for the details, and I think that is the key both to its failure at the theater and its success as a DVD.

This is not my all-time favorite movie (admittedly, the late Stanley Kubrick is still my favorite director), but it is quite possibly in the top ten, definitely the top twenty.

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Summary: I want my two hours back.
Review: When I sit down to watch a movie, I generally find something about it to enjoy - its humor, its characters, its action, its drama. But there were only two high points to this movie - the cinematography and the end. Not the way it ended, but the fact that it did. I found the plot depressing, the characters shallow, and the pacing painfully slow. We spend so much of the movie waiting for a change, for an improvement in poor Frank's condition - but we don't get it. Even his successes are disappointng - to him and thus to us. It just wasn't worth the time or the dime. I have a lot of respect for the actors and the director, but for their other works, not this one.

Rating:
Summary: Great characters, great acting, but no plot!
Review: The trailers for this movie made it one of my "must see" films of the year. So, as it came out on video, naturally I rented it.

What I found was amazing while still managin to disappoint somewhat. Nicholas Cage plays one of his most complex and diverse characters to date, and the supporting cast (particularly the other EMS drivers) deliver in a way that few ensembles have been able to in recent years.

The only problem with this movie, is that it is about absolutely nothing. There's no real plot to follow along with, and if the vague attempt at a storyline is supposed to pass off as one it fails miserably.

If the script had been better written this would be one of the top movies of all time for it's respective genre, but instead we are left with great characters and great acting wandering aimlessly through the streets.