Bringing Out the Dead (1999)

Bringing Out the Dead, a from Martin Scorsese, is not I repeat is not a somber tragedy about unbalanced paramedics horrified by death. It’s a whacked out, high speed, pitch black dramatic comedy about unbalanced paramedics horrified by death. If Terry Gilliam directed an episode of ER, the result would probably come close to this hallucinatory ride through Manhattan’s underbelly.

And, like Gilliam’s films, it will divide audiences down the middle some will call it an incoherent mess, others, an inspired frenzy. Our (anti) hero is Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage), a burnt out paramedic who looks like he should check into the hospital himself. Every day he goes into work late and begs his captain to fire him, and every day his short staffed superior promises, “I’ll fire you tomorrow, OK? Just work tonight.”

But the night is what Frank fears most. He hasn’t saved anyone’s life for weeks, and visions of those he saw die haunt him. He constantly sees Rose, a Hispanic teenager he accidentally choked with a trachea tube, and not even the increasingly dangerous antics of his demented driving partners (John Goodman, Ving Rhames, and Tom Sizemore) can stop her face from appearing on almost every passerby. The frantic paramedic staggers through the film, hovering between exhaustion and madness, haunted by Rose, on a dazed quest to put her wandering soul to rest and recover his own.

Since it’s basically the profile of a nervous breakdown, you’d expect Bringing Out the Dead to be at least a little manic. Scorsese goes way over the top, however, directing the proceedings like the Mad Hatter with a viewfinder. With the help of Natural Born Killers cinematographer Robert Richardson, he recreates the New York of Taxi Driver, a Boschian metropolis of horrors, populated by the damned, saturated with neon, and bathed in endless night.

But rather than following a loner’s slow journey into madness, he races along with a group of lunatics driving padded cells with sirens. At almost every opportunity, he crafts moments of Monty Python esque grisly absurdity. In one hilarious exchange, Frank tricks a suicidal maniac into going to the hospital with promises of doctor assisted euthanasia (“If you don’t get in this ambulance, I won’t kill you.”), later, he chastises another would be suicide for his poor wrist slitting technique and offers some pointers and a knife.

It’s in the lead performances that Dead disappoints most. Cage tries to infuse his scenes with the infectious nuttiness he showed off in Vampire’s Kiss and Wild at Heart, and he succeeds on occasion. However, since his character is usually only half-awake, he comes across as somewhat sedated, especially when compared to the madmen around him. Cage’s real life wife Patricia Arquette doesn’t fare especially well either, her character is so emotionally dead, it’s hard to tell if her turn as an ex-junkie is nicely understated or just plain flat.

Among the supporting players, Sizemore serves up another helping of his nutty, tough guy shtick as Tom, a jaded driver who loves the thrill of extra bloody calls. But it’s Rhames who really shines as the Bible quoting, hooker soliciting paramedic Marcus, a Pulp Fiction-esque scene where he “raises” a heroin overdose with the “power of Jesus” (and a little shot of adrenaline) is the film’s funniest.

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• Collateral (2004)
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