# Bringing Out the Dead (1999)

### reviewed by
Mac VerStandig

    Bringing Out the Dead
    3 and 1/2 Stars (Out of 4)
    Reviewed by Mac VerStandig
    critic@moviereviews.org
    http://www.moviereviews.org

    October, 1999

Martin Scorsese's Bringing out the Dead, staring Nicholas Cage, is an edgy and unusual, yet solid, film. The movie, despite the absence of a material plot, has strong themes and character development that serve as a guide through a two-hour span. Those seeking deep and meaningful content similar to the director's Taxi Driver and Goodfellas or Cage's Leaving Las Vegas will not be disappointed. But those looking for a film that hops on the emergency room bandwagon in wake of hit television shows like ER, Chicago Hope and the new Third Watch may find this film to be too much of an intellectual challenge and are advised to seek their thrills in the popcorn hit Double Jeopardy.

"This film takes place in New York City in the early 90's" read the first words across the screen. Those 13 words and the ambulance that appears soon after create the film's most important character: the city. The audience can gather that the Big Apple is still a crime polluted mess in the pre-Giuliani era and that hospitals are an equally large issue. Just in case any doubt lingers, the film quickly shows us streets lined with prostitutes and hospital hallways lined with stretchers. From there emerges the hero, Frank Peirce (Nicholas Cage), an ambulance driver who has seen it all. For the next 58 hours (three nights, two days) Peirce will experience a variety of extreme measures, and the audience looks on in an almost voyeuristic fashion.

Peirce fringes on insanity throughout the film due to the numerous people who come into his ambulance pronounced insane and leave it pronounced dead. He gets them all, from the drug addicts to the suicidal to the "just plain nuts." This makes for an interesting juxtaposition: society's insane vs. society's insane workers. And then there are the corpses that he sees regularly, making him witness to more last moments than the average person's tolerance could possibly allow. Like all the other drivers, hebuilds an immunity, but, during these 58 hours, that shield is dropped.

Bringing out the Dead is sprinkled with the type of deranged and desperately dark humor that you only find amusing somewhere around 3:00 AM when you are out of caffeine but forced to stay awake. Scorsese creates that setting so well that the jokes not only work, but you come to rely on their comic relief as a means of surviving the film. Highlights include the assorted calls that come through the ambulance radio (elderly woman abducted by her cat, etc..) and one scene where Peirce and eccentric fellow driver (Ving Rhames) find a supposedly dead victim, but stage a dramatically overdone revival for his stoned friends.

This summer, another legendary director gave us his look at New York City by following a character over a period of a few days. In Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick portrayed an upper-class, secretive and perverse society that seemed to function completely on its own. Scorsese's look into paramedics is very similar. The men we meet run the night shift and find themselves isolated from society. They know each other, recognize their peers' ins and outs and are even accustomed to some of the same drug and alcohol calls from people who never learn their lesson and revolve in and out of the hospital doors.

Another summer film set in New York City showed the power of using contrasting music and scenes. Throughout Summer of Sam, as people would be brutally murdered on the streets, bright and uplifting music would dominate the moment. In Bringing out the Dead a whole panoply of tracks come into play. Stretchers, crying families and bloody scenes are accompanied by Van Morrison, R. E. M., The Who, UB40, Martha Reeves & The Vandellas and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (famous in part for another New York film, the Woody Allen classic Manhattan).

Bringing out the Dead is a thought-provoking and powerful film. Like the other cerebral movie at a theatre near you, American Beauty, this production can look for a prolonged box office run with no leading numbers but a positive buzz to give it stable positioning. Early on, Peirce tells us "I am good at my job." So is Martin Scorsese.

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