DIRECTED BY: Martin Scorsese WRITTEN BY: Paul Schrader, based upon a novel by Joe Connelly CAST: Nicolas Cage, Ving Rames, Tom Sizemore, John Goodman, Patricia Arquette
MPAA: Rated R for gritty violent content, drug use and language. Runtime: USA:120
"Saving someone's life is like being in love. It's the best drug in the world. You feel like God was in you. And why deny it? Why deny that for a moment God was you"
RATING: 10/10 - BEST PICTURE - #6
"The night started out with a bang. All the elements were in place for a long weekend: heat, humidity, moonlight. I was good at my job. There were periods when my hands moved with a speed and skill beyond me. But during the last year I started to loose that control. Things had turned bad. I haven't saved anyone in months. I have come to believe in such things as spirits leaving the body and not wanting to be put back. I grew up in this neighborhood. I worked here most as a paramedic and it had more ghosts per square foot than any other. Rose's ghost was getting closer. I just needed a good night's sleep and a couple of days off. It was six months since I lost Rose. Homeless. Asthmatic. 18 years old. I used to block bad calls out, but she wouldn't let go. And now she came to bare witness for all of them -- all that have been lost. I've always had nightmares, but now the ghosts didn't wait for me to sleep. They were part of the job- the eyes of a corpse, the screams of a loved one. After a while I came to understand that my role was less about saving lives, but about bearing witness. It was enough that I simply showed up. Except with Rose..." © Paramount Pictures
It is the early 1990's and New York has not yet undergone its renaissance of recent years. Sirens screaming and lights flashing, a New York City ambulance speeds through the night. Its drivers are paramedics working the graveyard shift -- men who come face-to-face with the dead and the dying on a daily basis. Burnt out from one too many nights on the job, they are nearly as broken as the bodies they haul through the streets. What keeps them going is their caustic sense of comedy, and an acrid view of a world which seems to have its surreal epicenter in Manhattan. Frank (Nicolas Cage) is among them. He has been doing this for 5 years and it is both his salvation and his doom, his dream and his nightmare. When he saves someone's life everything inside him glows and he feels as light as a feather. It's another thing when he looses a patient. And it is those cases that turn his life into an eternal hell. Tormented by horrible nightmares and haunted by ghosts of the people that he didn't manage to save, he reaches the very brink of spiritual collapse and redemption. We follow him and his colleges during 56 hours of their lives and share the experience of being a paramedic. Among them is the angry Tom (Tom Sizemore), the holy Marcus (Ving Rames) and the tiered Larry (John Goodman).
This is the long awaited comeback of the respected and acclaimed director Martin Scorsese, and I can assure you that it has been worth waiting for. Scorsese has always been a controversial director that created some of the best films Hollywood had to offer over the years. 'Bringing Out the Dead' doesn't have his most obvious trademarks, since this is not a mafia-fable, there is no particular violence or gore, and Robert De Niro is not in it. But artistically this is certainly 'A Martin Scorsese Film'. There is no particular story or character development. No melodrama. No climatic ending. This is reality. There is no question about it. It is 56 hours of a life. Scorsese, along side with Paul Schrader ('Taxi Driver') creates incredible characters that are so real, so human and vulnerable that we connect with them immediately. They live in a world, unknown to us. A world of eternal night, constant death, blood and suffering. There are periods of depression, a feeling of worthlessness, when they are not saving anyone. They feel like messengers of death. Confused, tormented, haunted, angry, they are all searching for someone to blame. A way to make their pain go away. All they feel is a constant longing for peace -- for that long forgotten feeling of closing the eyes and simply float away. They are not rescuers. They are not saviors. Their job is simple -- they are brining out the dead. This is a wildly surreal film. There is a bizarre feeling of a world within a world. Scorsese unravels his dark vision and paints a devastating picture of madness, paranoia, fear and death that form a void, a darkness that swallows you and doesn't let go. His film is explosive, expressive, fast paced and haunting. At times Scorsese is resorting to a pitch dark comedy, without loosing his point. "Hold this. If you let go, I swear, I won't kill you," Frank warns a suicidal character with another unexpected, throwaway punchline characteristic of all film's dialogue. But mostly Scorsese does what he does best -- displaying the pure, na k their frustrations, by channeling them into something else. Frank and his friends have all gone mad in their own direction. Larry races from diner to fast food joint, dreaming of the suburbs. Tom's way is anger, a murderous rage, a poor attempt to enjoy the blood and death surrounding him, that somehow compensates for the incredible pain that he is feeling. Marcus survives by putting his trust and hope in faith, a belief that all the death, misery and suffering happen according to God's divine and unknown plan. But none of their coping mechanisms work for Frank. For him life is just a void, an existence in a never ending darkness from which there is no escape.
Every performance is so controlled, so perfect, so real that you never question its authenticity. Nicolas Cage, an actor that has been accused of being a 'paycheck player', choosing money instead of art, shows his talent in a soulful and committed performance as the tortured and half-crazed paramedic. He mixes downcast periods of gloomy introspection with episodes of wild, lunatic abandon. At times his bloodshot, tormented eyes portray more sorrow and depth than any words that he is pronouncing. This is certainly Cage's best performance since 'Leaving Las Vegas'. Tom Sizemore ('Heat', 'Saving Private Ryan' ) is equally magnificent. He releases so much energy, so much emotion and power into his performance that he looks more like a ticking bomb rather than a person. Ving Rames ('Entrapment' ) gives a brilliant comic performance as the 'holy medic'. There are times when before resurrecting someone on the streets he (in a high pitched voice) asks God's forgiveness for "these sinners". Visually and technically this film is above perfect. Robert Richardson's cinematography is rich and inventive, employing some crazy shots as the camera turns the world upside down. Thelma Schoonmaker binds Richardson's shots together with her explosive editing, fast motion, flashing lights and neon glow. The music is provided by Elmer Bernstein's bizarre, eclectic score and some wisely inserted songs by Van Morrison and The Clash, among others. When all those elements are combined, they create an almost carnival atmosphere of light and shade, speed and violence that really gets under the skin. New York has never looked so dark before. The streets are empty, lit only by the pale moon, neon glow and flashing red lights of an ambulance. The only inhabitants are shadows, filth and dust. In other words, Scorsese has created a wildly surreal, dark and effectively paranoid motion picture, which is the director's best work since 'Goodfellas' (1990). Remember: This is NOT a light, entertaining popcorn-film or a feel-good movie. It is an incred i tale, which is nothing less than a powerful and emotionally devastating cinematic experience, created by the maestro of shadows and light.
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