Paramedics must have one of the world's worst professions: no sleep, no time to eat and people's lives in their hands. "Bringing Out the Dead" introduces the insane stress of paramedics' lives but in the end reveals that their skills and actions help sustain the life force that embodies humankind.
Legendary director Martin Scorsese's latest picture employs practically every cinematic style implemented throughout his illustrious career to tell the story, and he provides a window into the world of emergency medicine on the streets.
His name is Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage), and he seems like an ordinary fellow at the beginning, but appearances are deceptive. In "Dead," Scorsese chronicles three consecutive nights on the job. Frank's first night with partner Larry (John Goodman) is frustratingly routine, except when their dispatcher (voiced by Scorsese) assigns them to help a cardiac arrest victim, whom they revive after 10 minutes without oxygen. The victim's daughter, Mary Burke (Patricia Arquette, Cage's real-life wife), accompanies her resuscitated father back to the hospital, nicknamed "Our Lady of Perpetual Misery" by the paramedics.
The next day, Frank teams up with Marcus (Ving Rhames), who represents a duality of purity and impurity. They journey into the depths of a goth club, where they resuscitate a kid who has overdosed on Red Death, turning their efforts into a mockingly religious ritual. (The drug, which resurfaces several times in the film, is a potent heroin cocktail ravaging the streets of early-1990s, pre-Rudolph Giuliani New York, where the film is set.) Finally, Frank's shift with Tom (Tom Sizemore) brings the story to a close. Tom acts more like a neighborhood bully than a paramedic, threatening and beating several patients for his own amusement.
Like "Mean Streets," this film does not try to push a moral upon the audience; they are left to judge the outcome on their own. Scorsese's slice-of-life style fits perfectly, since a paramedic's life never reaches a new plateau, instead looping back on itself day after day.
Each shift depicts different aspects of Frank's personality, depending on his partner. His evening with Larry represents paramedics' constant battle with their bodies to keep their job performance high. They converse constantly about eating and sleeping and how their profession prevents them from living a normal life.
The next shift, with Marcus, encompasses more global ideas; Marcus is a devout Christian, but is tempted by prostitutes and his sultry dispatcher (voiced by Queen Latifah). Through Marcus, Scorsese delves into the ironically godlike ability of paramedics to save lives in a chaotic, godless environment.
Finally, Frank's shift with Tom exemplifies the worst possible outcome for a paramedic: the EMT who becomes so frustrated with his profession that he takes the aggression out on those he is responsible for saving. Frank gets sucked into Tom's aggressive outlook and even attempts to attack Noel (Latin singer Marc Anthony), a mentally unstable, homeless man who repeatedly goes to the hospital for help.
Fortunately, he comes to his senses and saves Noel from being beaten, because Noel represents another aspect of the tortured medical technician. The theme expressed here does not surface easily at first glance, but Scorsese is arguing that all humans are essentially one with each other. By saving other people's lives, you save your own life; and when you compromise another's life, you compromise yours as well.
As in most of his movies, Scorsese refuses to explain these ideas straightforwardly. He forces his audience to look past the tangible and into the deeper aspects of life to search for the true message. Once again, he unleashes his visual genius, with virtuoso sequences of the racing ambulance.
But the film's pacing is disjointed, as scenes outside the ambulance trudge along slowly. Most of the performances stand up very well, especially from Cage and the underused Rhames, but Scorsese strains the relationship between Mary and Frank because he refuses to adhere to convention by making them fall in love with each other. Mary may well represent Frank's compassionate side, and a relationship between the two would mask that. As a result, their scenes together lack the focus and energy of Frank's other relationships.
Despite the need for a little polish around these edges, which prevents "Bringing Out the Dead" from measuring up to Scorsese's greatest works, the film proves that he still has the gift. Once again, viewers can trust the director to show them what life is really like, while leaving them to draw their own conclusions on how to deal with it.
Grade: B+
Read More
The best albums of 2014
By Noah Zeidman | December 4, 2014Across genres, it has been a pretty great year in music.
Top 10 movies of 2014
December 4, 2014This has been an excellent year for film, offering everything from gripping blockbusters to innovative personal films.
Iggy Azalea is “Reclassified”
December 4, 2014It has become common practice among music artists to repackage their albums in an effort to simultaneously boost single sales and dish out new content by slightly renaming the album or slapping “Deluxe” onto the title.
