Bringing Out the Dead (1999) 1 1/2 stars out of 4. Starring Nicolas Cage, Patricia Arquette, John Goodman, Ving Rhames and Tom Sizemore. Written by Paul Schrader. Directed by Martin Scorsese.
Even a mediocre Martin Scorsese film has some interesting moments.
And a few are interspersed in "Bringing Out the Dead" another trek down the wet, dark and dangerous streets of New York.
Unfortunately, Scorsese has taken us down these streets before, most notably in "Taxi Driver," to which "Bringing Out the Dead" is a distant cousin.
Like that earlier classic, "Bringing Out the Dead" features a protagonist who also narrates throughout, and who, while not a Travis Bickle-like psychopath, shows an air of disgust toward the human refuse that floats around him.
Frank Pierce, though, does not drive a taxi. His vehicle is an ambulance. Pierce is an EMS paramedic. He's a burnt-out, hollowed-eye hulk of a man, who wants to get a good night's sleep as well as chase away the ghosts of the various people he treated but did not survive.
The most frequent specter is that of Rose, a young woman whose death continually haunts Frank. Every face he sees reminds him of Rose. The guilt weighs him down like an anchor.
One night, Frank meets Mary Burke (Patricia Arquette), a one-time junkie, after he takes her father - who has suffered a heart attack - to the hospital.
He hopes by saving Mary's father that it will be his first step on the road to redemption.
The problem with "Bringing Out the Dead," based on the novel by Joe Connelly and adapted by the legendary Paul Schrader, is that the story really doesn't go anywhere.
Cage gives a one-note performance. He merely stares out the ambulance window with his hound-dog eyes, wishing he were anywhere but on the job.
Arquette is no better. She merely mopes about, worrying about her father, commenting on how she hated the man, but - because of his heart attack - wants to make things right with him.
As Frank's various partners, John Goodman, Ving Rhames and Tom Sizemore are more types than real people. They are interchangeable foils for Frank's various close encounters with the disenfranchised.
What keeps the film from being a total loss is some of the dark humor Schrader has invested in the script. To keep their sanity, the paramedics drink, beat on their ambulances, use their own drugs and sometimes beat up on the people they are paid to save.
These are men at the breaking point, who deal with human suffering every day, who use any method they can devise to block out the misery surrounding them.
"Bringing Out the Dead" is not as vicious or depressing as "Taxi Driver." It does offer a ray of hope and redemption. Its New York is more of a surreal nightmare rather than the hell on earth envisioned by Travis Bickle.
But in the end, "Bringing Out the Dead" falls flat. It lacks substance and weight. Scorsese has given us a flashy picture show, nothing more.
Bob Bloom is the movie critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, IN. He can be reached by e-mail at bloom@journal-courier.com or a cbloom@iquest.net
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews