Review of Bringing Out the Dead (1999) by Rob D — 01 Jan 2008

`Saving someone's life is like falling in love. The best drug in the world. For days, sometimes weeks afterwards, you walk the streets, making infinite whatever you see...'.

Bringing Out The Dead is not your normal film. It tells the story of a paramedic Frank Pierce (Nicholas Cage) who is losing faith in his career choice. He hasn't saved anyone's life for some time, and everyone he seems to help, dies. He works the summer `graveyard shift' in New York with a variety of paramedic partners (John Goodman, Ving Rhames & Tom Sizemore) becoming more and more depressed each night he works - haunted by the memories of the people he has been unable to save. He meets Mary Burke (Patricia Arquette) - a psychologically abused ex-junkie - when her father suffers a heart attack and Frank is called to assist. They form a bond from their constant meeting at the hospital as she waits around for news of her father.

This film portrays a New York night as a seedy underworld, filled with drugs and alcohol and overflowing hospital emergency rooms. It portrays paramedics as people on the edge - traumatised by the many things they have seen; lives that no one would want to live.

Martin Scorsese's direction is good - the actors' successful portrayal of their characters really makes you feel like you are there. The cinematography is very different to the majority of other films - images sped up, strange camera cuts during dialogue scenes; it reminded me a lot of the mish-mashed collage-style images seen in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers. So I was not overly surprised when I researched the cinematographer (Robert Richardson) of this film and found that he was also the cinematographer on Natural Born Killers.

Nicholas Cage's performance is very much Nicholas Cage from a variety of other films - his portrayal of a depressed paramedic would no doubt have come easy for him as his character Frank is a lot like many other of Cage's previous roles.

This film has a very strong black comedy feel to it. It is rated R for it's adult themes rather than gross-out factor, to which there is very little. It is a very intense film and you certainly don't go away feeling in high spirits - but you don't seem to go away feeling sombre either. You see a glimpse of hope for the characters and think that maybe, just maybe - everything will be alright.