How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Bringing Out the Dead (1999): Dir: Martin Scorsese / Cast: Nicolas Cage, Patricia Arquette, Ving Rhames, Tom Sizemore, John Goodman: About the weariness of a soul that needs rest. Nicolas Cage plays a paramedic haunted by the images of a young woman he failed to save. He sees all sorts of people arrive through the medical room doors, many who deliberately cause their own pain. He feels trapped and needs a moment of refuge. An emergency call results in the image of a family that watch in horror as their father lay unconscious. Insightful film about our decaying society. Another New York based masterpiece by Martin Scorsese whose street sense films include Taxi Driver and After Hours. Wonderful performance by Cage with Patricia Arquette as the daughter of a victim whom he connects with through her need of rest from drugs and relationships. Hilarious performances by John Goodman, Ving Rhames and Tom Sizemore as three paramedic that accompany Cage through three long nights of turmoil. Goodman is totally about where to eat, while Cage attempts to drown it out with sleep. Rhames bursts with religious enthusiasm in hopes of making his mark on one's soul. Sizemore tends to be abusive particularly with those whom he sees as lost causes. Then there is Arquette, which is where Cage finds refuge. Theme regards exhaustion of life itself and our desire for peace and rest. Score: 10 / 10

"Saving someone's life is like falling in love. The best drug in the world. God has passed through you. Why deny it, that for a moment there, God was you?"Bringing Out the Dead presents a dark and bleak view of New York City as we get to experience it through the main character's depressive perception. Working as an ambulance paramedic, Frank Pierce has always found purpose in his life in saving others, but after not being able to save a young girl and feeling haunted by her ghost he has lost his passion and begins to question his existence. The torment he is experiencing leads him to an identity crisis that impacts the way he (and therefore we the audience) sees the city. Martin Scorsese gets all the technical aspects of the film right, teaming up with his usual collaborators: the cinematography done by Robert Richardson and the editing by Thelma Schoonmaker, but somehow the story doesn't work as well. I understand what he was trying to do, but I just couldn't care for the characters in this film and it all felt a little too surreal for my taste. This is the first film from Scorsese that I've seen that hasn't worked for me, but I do have to give him credit for delivering on the technical aspects. There are also some great moments and some supporting performances that worked really well for me, but it only made me wish the film focused on those characters instead of on Frank. The unique way in which the city was portrayed through Frank's eyes as he's dealing with his personal demons and nightmares really never engaged me because I didn't care for his character. His partners on the other hand were much more engaging and I wish we could've seen it through their eyes instead. The screenplay was adapted by Paul Schrader from Joe Connelly's novel of the same name. This was Schrader and Scorsese's fourth and final collaboration together after having worked in Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation of Christ. Bringing Out the Dead is perhaps most similar to Taxi Driver in tone, but it is a departure from most of his work considering its surreal and nightmarish tone. The film follows Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage) as he drives across New York City in his ambulance during the night shifts. It's a two man ambulance team although his partners switch every night. Frank is completely burned out considering he hasn't been able to save anyone over the past few weeks and is eagerly awaiting to be fired. His partners don't seem to be experiencing the same problem as they all seem to deal with their demons in different ways. There's Larry (John Goodman) who is constantly thinking about food, Marcus (Ving Rhames) who is a religiously devoted man, and Tom (Tom Sizemore) who borderlines on psychotic behavior. They work for Mercy Hospital, which is always full of wacky characters and very crowded. Frank begins to fraternize with the daughter of one of the patients he brings in, her name is Mary (Patricia Arquette), and she seems to be the only good thing about his job now. Tormented by the ghosts of those he couldn't save, he searches for his salvation through trying to help Mary and saving both of them in the process. Despite not enjoying this film as much as I have other Scorsese movies, I have to admit that there were some incredibly entertaining scenes. Ving Rhames has an amazing scene along Nicolas Cage and one of the patients they are trying to save. It was hilarious. He was by far my favorite character in the film. Patricia Arquette was also pretty interesting, and Cliff Curtis also had a couple of great scenes as Cy. Those were the highlights for me in an exhilarating and fast paced film that failed to engage me with the main character played by Cage. Scorsese does manage to capture the chaos and darkness of the city in a very unique way and the technical brilliance of this film stand out above the story. It's a demented film, but it just wasn't my type of movie because the story was emotionally uninvolving. I will give it credit for the hilarious scenes, but I was let down by the lack of an engaging story.

Bringing Out the Dead is a film directed by Martin Scorsese.It stars Nicolas Cage, Ving Rhames, John Goodman, Tom Sizemore and Patricia Arquette.It tells a story of Frank Pierce,a paramedic on the brink of physical and emotional collapse.The screenplay was written by Paul Schrader and it was based from the novel of Joe Connelly.It is about 48 hours in the life of a burnt-out paramedic: Frank Pierce is a Manhattan medic,working the graveyard shift in a two-man ambulance team. He's burned out,exhausted, and seeing ghosts, especially a young woman he failed to save six months before. He is no longer able to save people as he simply brings out the dead. We follow him for three nights, each with a different partner: Larry, who thinks about dinner; Marcus, who looks to Jesus; and Tom, who wallops people out of frustration. Frank befriends Mary,the daughter of a heart victim he brings in. She is an ex-junkie, angry at her father but now hoping he'll live.Once called Father Frank for his efforts to rescue lives,he sees the ghosts of those he failed to save around every turn. He has tried everything he can to get fired-calling in sick, coming in late, delaying taking calls where he might have to face one more victim he can't help- yet he cannot quit the job.This is another Scorsese film achievement as he brings to the screen the life lived by people in the health care profession particularly the paramedics.It was definitely a dark and compelling film. Cage brings to life excellently a paramedic who has somewhat lost hope in his profession to save people from dying.Aside from Cage,the rest of the cast and the film makers are also commendable to bring to life this realistic and brilliant film.I myself could relate to the emotions of Frank and the disturbing experience watching it being a in the health care profession myself.In summary,Cage,Scorsese and Bringing Out The Dead delivers!!!

After a decade of misdirection ('The Age of Innocence', 'Casino', 'Kundun') Martin Scorsese is back where he belongs, beating a welcome retreat to the mean streets of Manhattan for what many aficionados might consider to be an unofficial sequel (although it's more like a matching bookend) to his nightmare 1976 classic 'Taxi Driver'.Such will likely be the prevailing opinion, at any rate. It's hard enough these days for a halfway challenging movie to win an audience on its own merits, without adding the extra burden of unrealistic expectations. But because of its credentials Bringing Out the Dead will have to withstand a lot of inevitable (and unfair) comparisons to the earlier film, with which it shares the same grim setting and similar themes of alienation and redemption.Hardly surprising, since both were written by Paul Schrader, who knows every contour of this ambiguous moral territory like the back of his own hand. Only the presence of Robert DeNiro (or at least Harvey Keitel) would have made the reunion complete, but Scorsese wisely agreed to the casting of Nicholas Cage in the lead role, as a burned-out paramedic working the graveyard shift in that mid-town neighborhood west of Times Square known (for good reason) as Hell's Kitchen.Cage is in a slump: he's working too much, sleeping too little, and hasn't saved a life in months, not a healthy situation for someone who lives and (mostly) dies vicariously through his rescue efforts. Too many unresolved medical emergencies in the lunatic underbelly of Manhattan have brought him to a point where the only hold on his sanity is the paramedic's creed, usually applied to his patients: "keep the body going until the brain and heart recover".It's the pivotal message of the movie (and easy to spot because it's repeated twice), giving Cage's efforts to preserve his own battered psyche an irresistible, sometimes reckless momentum. The episodic storyline, adapted from the debut novel by Joe Connelly (an erstwhile paramedic himself) may not appeal to the average multiplex audience, conditioned to expect a more conventional, plot-driven narrative. But viewers who don't subscribe to the sales pitch ethos at large in modern Hollywood will find much to admire in Cage's not entirely successful struggle over a long, chaotic "weekend of full moons" to navigate the grief and accumulated guilt of too many flatliners.Not an easy task, as it turns out, especially in such a merciless environment. "This city will kill you if you're not strong enough", he's reminded at one point by Patricia Arquette, playing the long-suffering daughter of a brain-dead heart attack victim, and representing a token ray of slightly tarnished sunlight in an otherwise gloomy all-male scenario. It's the second key line of dialogue in the movie: a Nietzschean paraphrase no doubt endorsed by Scorsese himself, who (not for the first time) paints an all too vivid portrait of New York City not likely to be applauded by the local chamber of commerce.An introductory title places the action in the specific time frame of the early 1990s, before the PR mouseketeers of the Walt Disney Company ('Team Rodent', in Carl Hiaasen's memorable words) began their crusade to make the city safe for family tourism. This is the Big Apple before its corporate facelift: a loser's paradise of low-rent sleaze emporiums and wasted lives. Every other scene leaves an indelible (if not entirely accurate) impression of being set at the top of another inner-city tenement building, surrounded by a (mostly) nocturnal landscape littered with human flotsam: junkies, whores, hustlers, alcoholics, homeless bums and other assorted crazies, not least among them the paramedic crews themselves.Over the course of his dreamlike but sleepless 48-hour flight from reality Cage will find himself paired with a series of increasingly eccentric partners, from a jovial John Goodman to Ving Rhames to a truly psychotic Tom Sizemore. You'll find a measure of more or less traditional buddy-film banter while each team is on the streets, but don't expect too many comfortable chuckles. Scorsese has a gift for raising uneasy laughter from even the darkest scenario, and like all his best films the humor in Bringing Out the Dead is colored in shades of midnight gray, suitably morbid but still amusing if approached in the proper twisted spirit.Sharing equal screen time with a trio of certifies scene-stealers must have posed a particular challenge for Cage, normally an unrestrained actor of no small notoriety. He has been known to run amok over weaker material "like a narcoleptic bull in a cheap china shop" (quoting an acerbic review of his jaw-dropping hambone turn in the 1989 film 'Vampire's Kiss'), but it's a credit to Scorsese's skill that he manages to coax his star into a performance of laudable restraint and understatement. There's more than a little evidence of method acting residue at work: it looks as if Cage prepared for his insomniac role by depriving himself of sleep for several weeks, giving his complexion a totally convincing night owl pallor, strikingly highlighted by Robert Richardson's luminous cinematography.In the spirit of the times the film outstays its welcome by a good twenty minutes, a familiar complaint in these days of slack-fingered editing and narrative hypertrophy. But after its headlong rush into the urban maelstrom of inner Manhattan the story manages to resolve itself on a note of unexpected grace. If the aim was simply to recapture the flavor of Taxi Driver, it might have ended in a cathartic bloodbath worthy of Travis Bickle, instead of with the quieter (but no less powerful) epiphany shown here.So maybe it's true, at least for the maverick directors of the 1970s: you can't go home again. And on the evidence presented here, that's something to be thankful for.