Bringing Out the Dead (1999) Reviewed by Eugene Novikov http://www.ultimate-movie.com/ Member: Online Film Critics Society
Starring Nicolas Cage, John Goodman, Patricia Arquette, Ving Rhames, Tom Sizemore. Rated R.
Martin Scorcese's latest project is his least potent since his first (Boxcar Bertha, for the uninitiated, was easily his most turgid endeavor). The ideas are here and so is the cast, but the set-ups in the script are merely serviceable. Bringing Out the Dead has a lot of things going for it but is unable to finally bring them all together into a compelling whole. It's still a decent feature from one of our most respected auteurs, but one of Scorcese's masterpieces this ain't.
In his most demanding role since Leaving Las Vegas, Nicolas Cage plays Frank Pierce, who sleeps by day and is an EMS technician by night. His stressful job has been getting to him lately, to the point where he begs his boss to fire him. He thinks he is seeing ghosts of people he couldn't save as he is driving around nighttime New York City. His partner (John Goodman) thinks he is losing it, and he may not be all wrong.
Pierce befriends the daughter of a dying man (Patricia Arquette). Her guilt and despair drive her to enter the drug underworld from which Frank must save her without descending there himself. It's harder than it sounds, especially when a mysterious drug-lord persuades him to take a pill that gives him the best few hours of sleep in his life. This dilemma only adds to the stress in his life, and we begin to see that he is on a verge of a breakdown.
The straw that finally breaks the camel's back is Frank's new partner, Marcus (Ving Rhames). Though his intentions are honorable, Marcus is a loud-mouthed, irritating guy who gets on Frank's nerves with his endless Bible-quoting diatribes. Just when he thought his life couldn't get any more depressing, he gets partnered with this guy. Folks, get ready to dance.
Nicolas Cage is fantastic as our favorite EMS technician. I'm not even sure this performance doesn't surpass the one he is best known for: Leaving Las Vegas. He is perfect in a movie that's far from it. To say that he is above his material would be a gross understatement. I've always thought that John Goodman was a very talented actor and his turn here certainly does not disprove that. He doesn't get as much screentime as I would have liked to see, but he makes himself known. Ving Rhames is an actor famous for his onscreen presence even more than his tremendous acting ability, and he reinforces that. His character is the film's most memorable aside from Cage's.
One performance I didn't like here was that of Patricia Arquette, who is rather flat as Pierce's apparent love interest. The character, too, is a curious one at best. She seems to act as nothing more as a device; a tool to squeeze as much pathos as humanly possible out of our protagonist. She is never defined as a person and we are never given any reason to care about her other than Pierce's attachment to her, and that's not enough.
Bringing Out the Dead is a reasonably entertaining but very uneven movie. It brings together a dream team of performance and a set of priceless individual moments without piecing them all together convincingly. Scenes work but the movie never gets off the ground because the story isn't as interesting to us as Scorcese presumes it to be. I reveled in the script's details without getting involved in, or particularly enjoying its main storyline.
Look: this isn't a horrible movie by any stretch of the imagination. I don't think the post 1975 Scorcese could possibly make one. What this is, however, is a disappointing movie. It's better viewed as a collection of vignettes rather than as a big whole. It just doesn't work like that.
Grade: C+
©1999 Eugene Novikov
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