Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Yazmin Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

loriharon Along with After Hours in all possibility the most underrated Martin Scorsese movie. Bringing out the dead is an extremely well-made film by a master filmmaker and ably acted by underrated Nicholas Cage and supported by the likes of Vhing Rames and John Goodman. Taking place in a span of three nights this is a dark comedy which is bound to become a cult classic soon. 9/10 (Go watch for the magic of Martin Scorsese).

sharky_55 It's as if someone (and that person is Scorsese himself) threw Taxi Driver into an all-purpose blender, cranked it up to high speed and mushed it all up, splattering and eradicating its hard edge, and spitting out this film. It see the existential and emotional limbo of Nicholas Cage, who is the only actor who could even attempt to approach a line such as "I wash my face with three types of soap, each smelling like a different season" and not burst into giggles halfway through. He works the graveyard city shift in the dead of the night, patrolling the streaky neon-lit streets in a shoddy ambulance and partners who never understand his woes. He might as well be commandeering Charon's ferry through the River Styx; the Manhattan that Scorsese envisions is not glitzy or grand, and the chaos of the streets is extended to the emergency rooms, a nightmare straight out of the frenetic style of ER, less a place of healing and more a war-zone. Frank's uniquely special dilemma is that no one else seems to hoard all the pain and suffering around them like he does, and the ability to see dead people as an afterthought. Larry (an ever jovial John Goodman) treats the work like a temporary job to boost the finances before he starts his own business; it's dirty work that has to be done, never mind the lives ripped apart. Marcus is Ving Rhames straight out of a sitcom - an overzealous preacher type who flirts through the radio dispatch and comically attributes their work to religious miracle. And Tom Wolls seems to be a vampire in disguise, much too bloodthirsty to be in this particular line of work. These partners are more or less played for laughs against the mortal whispers of Frank. In fact, not even the various victims on the murky streets seem to be taking the whole ordeal seriously. In between his girlfriend's cries of agony one man tries unsuccessfully to assert that they are both virgins (even as three baby feet poke out from one end), a group of drugged-up stragglers attempts a prayer circle to will their friend I.B. Bangin back to the cruel life, and the wild-haired Noel has a recurring bit as a hallucinating patient smashing car windows (predictably, these visions are not nearly as heart-stopping as Frank's).All this seems at odds with Frank's worldview, who treats the act of saving lives as a some sort of hedonistic drug and floats along the streets like an angel that can't help but get involved. Cage played a similarly mopey, self-serious character in the abysmal City of Angels, and his voice-over is rife with the same mournful tone and clumsy symbolisms. The cinematography adds a hazy, bloom effect that lights his body up with an angelic glow and has the added effect of well and truly dating this movie as part of the late 90s. Thankfully, it hasn't descended into entire cheese, but there might as well be the dotted outline of a halo hovering above his head. As always, the angel falls to earth and is corrupted by all he sees. The haze lifts and every hallucinogenic and chaotic phenomena is hurtled at Frank and therefore us. Arquette, monotonous and stripped of all emotion in the mourning period, sheds her wool cardigan for...well whatever the drug den whores are all wearing. Frank himself indulges in shots of adrenaline and the devilish riffs of *gasp*, rock and roll. This is classic Scorsese, of course. He can't help but inject a bit of energy into it all, forgetting that he has Nicholas Cage, the king of externalising loneliness (see Leaving Las Vegas) and losing his sensitivity for irony in the midst of all the darkness and terror. We don't really know why the departed want to just be left alone to die and depart for the afterlife except because the plot demands it to strain Frank, and so we can't really empathise with the peace he finds at the end of it all. He seems to be fated to stroll the earth unable to entirely rid it of suffering (see Marcus holding a spotless, healthy baby as if he was in a fertility commercial, then pan to Frank's bloody fetus, which dies at hospital's door) until he isn't.

estebangonzalez10 "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.

chaos-rampant This could have been something special, one of the great metaphors in cinema. A vehicle for us to hurl through the night of suffering, where life is transient and we learn to let go of our clinging.The movie is halfway this anyway. We ride the ambulance through the electric night of New York, ferrying back and forth from the outskirts of life broken humans who plead to us with their miseries. There are some inspired visions of this itinerant life, of the homeless sleeping where they may and haggard-looking individuals walking the pavements automaton-like, but they are too glossy for me to really register. Mere studio recreations that fail to give the impression of a life caught unawares.It's a great touch that the depressed paramedic who is our guide through this must learn to be detached from the suffering he remedies, ready to offer his helping hand but not be dismayed when that hand is refused by death. How instead of jumping in the quicksand of suffering to save others, we must learn to draw them to our safe ground.But the film is unawares of what transpires in it, and halfway through becomes a deranged comedy, played to the pounding grooves of Motown. Having missed the opportunity to create a spiritual work that matters, after this initial disappointment, it's to the movie's credit then that it does not become a mere banal lesson in humanity. As our protagonist loses it, the movie revels in the opportunity for insanity.That we get all this by the hand of Scorsese, a filmmaker with a vested interest in cinematography, only makes me think of how this could be done better, longer and more cinematic. For ostensibly bleak material, this is strangely watchable however.