It sounded promising. The greatest American director working in his favorite neighborhood again, with one of the best American film actors.  When the pitch of a new movie includes "Martin Scorsese," "Nicolas Cage," and "a story about the underbelly of New York," you automatically anticipate raves on all critical fronts. And Bringing Out the Dead elivers a lot of what Scorsese fans expect. But not enough of it. There's great acting, great cinematography, and Scorsese himself in his best role so far. But a story? Only in the sketchiest sense.

Perhaps Scorsese was drawn to the idea of working at night in a modern context--revisiting the tension and the menace of New York streets as seen from behind the wheel and applying his newer filmmaking tricks to a story that echoes his early classics (Mean Streets, Taxi Driver).  Unfortunately, while he still films these streets with an intimate understanding and photographic finesse, the script never supplies enough of a story. Instead of watching a character disintegrate or rise from the ashes, this movie's hero has already fallen too far, and we just watch him in agony.

Bringing Out the Dead is like a sad, pale echo of Dante's Inferno. Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage) is the son of a nurse and a bus driver. His job is as an ambulance driver, so he's a little of both. That's one of his jokes, one of the bits of humor he clings to so desperately in order to maintain some semblance of sanity. Most of the cases he responds to are merely the
"regulars," people prone to hurting themselves in desperate bids for attention and love. One is called Mr. O, and it's not hard to see why; when they visit him he can only communicate with long moans.

Haunted by the ghost of Rose, a homeless woman who died during his CPR efforts, Frank drinks, smokes, and depends on adrenalin to keep himself  moving, fearful of the thoughts that catch up to him when he stands still.  Just as many of the wounded are too tired to go on living, Frank is so tired of his job he is begging to be fired.

His various ambulance partners aren't much help. Weaker, stronger, or weirder versions of Frank, they either encourage him to stay strong or else speed him on his way to becoming a casualty himself. I half expected one of his half-crazy cohorts to suggest they go to Brad Pitt's Fight Club and let out their anxieties in a fist fight.

Frank explains the toil of his job as a failed lifesaver to the audience in a steady, sleepy narration. After meditating on the fleeting joys of saving a life, he observes, "Taking credit when things go right doesn't work the  other way around." When a patient dies, as is usually the case, and the families and friends at the deathbed grieve, all Frank can muster is a feeble "I'm sorry." And then come the voices. Victims reappear, blaming him, crying out, dragging him down.

It's only when one of his colleagues plunges headlong into madness that Frank himself receives a shock to his system and tries to wrench himself free of despair and rid himself of Rose's relentless ghost. But Scorsese is too preoccupied with the violence and bizarre predicaments Frank discovers along the way to give the audience room for considering questions of faith and love, to contemplate where a soul might find solace in this context.

But there is much to admire about the film. As Frank, Cage is excellent. Since his jarring, incredible performance in Birdy, Cage has been the best actor around for playing haunted, desperate men, whether it's comically (Raising Arizona), commercially (Face Off), or
melodramatically (Leaving Las Vegas). As this desperate soul at the wheel, he's mesmerizing. And his supporting cast is just as strong: Ving Rhames, Jon Goodman, and Tom Sizemore are his partners, and Patricia Arquette is the lost and lonely woman with whom he discovers a tenuous friendship.

But even though the cast is entertaining and appropriately bedraggled, I kept waiting for a compelling plot to rise up amidst these details. Perhaps I had the wrong expectations; but even if this film is intended as a mere character sketch, it's a tedious scenario that wears out its welcome long before we see Frank Pierce come to any kind of epiphany. Bringing Out the
Dead employs a lot of talent in yet another aimless, dark and violent story. The last thing the cinema needs is more blood, violence, and despair. Films like Three Kings show us that violence can be effective, even essential, to storytelling. This film does not. And I don't recommend it, unless you care to see the best Nicolas Cage performance in several
years or some more of Scorsese's brilliant camera work.
 

Jeffrey Overstreet 11/30/99