It has been more than two decades since the world has witnessed the frighteningly prophetic "Taxi Driver" and its vision of a hellish New York courtesy of director Martin Scorsese and writer Paul Schrader. Now Scorsese and Schrader revisit those same mean streets to tell us they are just as mean and almost as hellish. "Bringing Out the Dead" is the latest in the sin, guilt, redemption and paranoia of the gritty side of Scorsese's New York and its inhabitants, but the approach is less lean and more listless. Still, it is often strangely compelling.
The almost gaunt-like Nicolas Cage stars as Frank Pierce, an exhausted ambulance paramedic who mostly works nights. He has not saved a life in months, and is starting to feel weary and sleepless - he cannot function in this crazed city anymore (this story is set in pre-Guiliani New York). Frank sees visions of an asthmatic girl he could not save in the past - he feels he has killed her and sees her in the faces of others walking the streets.
Frank is haunted by these visions, and resorts to drinking gin and eating junk food on the job. He works with three different medics. One is a detached, overweight slob, Larry (John Goodman), the other is a Motown-Biblical-preaching individual named Marcus (Ving Rhames) who flirts with dispatchers and is high on saving lives, and lastly there's a vicious medic, Tom Walls (Tom Sizemore) who uses a baseball bat on drug dealers and lives on "the blood spilling on the streets."
There is one life he almost saves, an elderly man who nearly dies of a heart attack. The grieving daughter, Mary Burke (Patricia Arquette), an ex-junkie, seeks consolation from Frank and hopes that her father will stay alive. This is the kind of news Frank wants to hear - the blood, the loss of lives (including a stillborn baby), the stench, the homeless are all reducing Frank to the level of a saint who lost his powers of healing. As Frank explains, "I was a grief mop." He can't even get fired from his job because he is needed, even in the midst of failure.
"Bringing Out the Dead" is based on an autobiographical book by Joseph Connelly (a former medic), and the film's episodic structure focuses on three hellish nights in Frank's life. As always, director Martin Scorsese knows these mean streets all too well and with cinematographer Robert Richardson, they create a New York of neon lights, red flashing sirens, sordid, shadowy environments such as unsanitized underground dwellings, punkish nightclubs, inviting drug dens, crazed, overcrowded hospital rooms, etc. In other words, this New York is not so different from the one depicted in Scorsese's finest film, "Taxi Driver." But whereas one felt that the New York of Travis Bickle's was an extension of his own paranoia, this New York feels strangely remote and bland, much like the title character.
Nicolas Cage turns in a mostly flat, restrained performance, bereft of any emotion or significance. Sure, his eyes give the impression of being haunted but there is little to suggest a sense of individuality. Who is Frank Pierce anyway? Why does he cling to a job in desperation of saving lives when he needs to save his own? These are all complex questions but Cage's dignified stare in two hours running time will make the viewer wish Robert De Niro had been cast. Cage has some loopy moments with Rhames but not enough to make the character three-dimensional and introspective.
I liked Patricia Arquette's performance as the frail Mary and her soft-voiced, angelic presence that seems almost magical in quality - her performance is marginally more interesting than Cage's. There is a moment when Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker exchange a series of dissolves between Arquette and Cage that establishes a connection between them. I also like the final image of Cage's head resting on Arquette's shoulder while a shade of white fills up the screen in a reverential manner.
The best performances are by Ving Rhames, John Goodman and Tom Sizemore as the fellow medics with different takes on what a job like this entails. Goodman is credibly detached, Rhames is delightfully sweet and uplifting especially when he fakes raising a punk rocker from the dead, and Sizemore is creepy and nervously tense giving us goosebumps each time he appears.
Other honorable mentions must go to real-life singer Marc Anthony as a Rastafarian drifter who drinks too much water, New Zealander Cliff Curtis as a suave, smoothly serene drug dealer (recalling Harvey Keitel's lizard-like smoothness in "Taxi Driver"), Mary Beth Hurt as a stern, honest hospital worker, Arthur J. Nascarella as Captain Barney, Frank's boss, and Aida Turturro as a nurse.
Scorsese also has employed new techniques in film grammar, which are more often seen in Oliver Stone's films. The fast-motion, stroboscopic, neon-lit sequences recall "Natural Born Killers," a technique Scorsese has never used before. It is no accident that the fast and loose cinematographer is Robert Richardson, who has lensed many of Stone's films.
There is a lot to admire in "Bringing Out the Dead," but not much to savor. It is a curiously flat, messy film with more lows than highs. Cage often fails to bring the movie out of its dead spots. Still, moments like the impaling of the drug dealer or Rhames's brief interludes with dispatchers and Cage evoke a power unprecendented in any film seen this year. "Bringing Out the Dead" is the kind of Scorsese film that makes you want to go and see a truly passionate Scorsese film that comes from the gut. Here, he feels like he is cavorting in shallow waters.
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