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Besides talent, two of the things that make Martin Scorsese such a great director are accessibility and open-mindedness. Not to put down Terence Malick (The Thin Red Line) or the late Stanley Kubrick, among others known to create a masterpiece and then disappear for a decade, but even when he’s not promoting his own latest project, Scorsese is in the public eye -- doing cameos in other directors’ movies (his bit in The Muse was a highlight), talking about the industry and art of film, in general garnering respect from peers and public alike. And he’s not afraid to experiment a little (either with ideas of his own or things he’s seen other directors do), as in De Niro’s flying fireball scene from the opening of Casino.
Both of these traits help make Bringing Out the Dead, in which Nicolas Cage plays a New York paramedic trying to survive a full-moon weekend, a worthwhile moviegoing experience whether you give a flying frug about what happens in The Big Crabapple or not. Otherwise I might have come away having reinforced my long-standing notion that NYC is essentially an overpopulated asylum with numeric street signs, and the whole island should be covered with a tarp and gassed. But having heard Scorsese say that this is a really a love letter to Hell’s Kitchen, the tough-as-ironbar neighborhood where he grew up, and seen the artistry he uncorks to express his feelings, I came to look at it as more like Saving Private Ryan, a maelstrom of mayhem in which humanity shines despite itself.
Cage is Frank Pierce, a five-year veteran EMT so used up by the experience that he’s about to snap and crumble into little pieces like a handful of Nicolas Cage Alcoholic Insomnia Pretzel Sticks. For six months he’s been literally tormented by visions of a homeless Latina teen he was unable to save, sliding into a haunted slump that seems to have robbed his ability to help anyone. Wandering sunken-eyed through a technosplatter nightmare of Stone Age violence, hopelessly crowded emergency rooms, neo-tribal drug epidemics, and serial patients whose casual insanity brings them back night after night, he shows up for work late or not at all, hoping to get fired. But he’s also an adrenaline junkie who loves/hates the job, which, when things go right, inspires a “godlike feeling, like falling in love,” so he keeps coming back trying to try and snap his streak.
Narrating the course of three successive midnight shifts with three different partners -- an ambitious gourmand (John Goodman), an evangelistic huckster (Ving Rhames), and a maniacal sadist (Tom Sizemore) who is frighteningly like what Frank could become (“Come on...there’s blood spilling in the street. Let’s go have some fun.”) -- he finds himself entwined in the life of a woman (Cage’s real-life spouse, Patricia Arquette) whose post-coronary father he has stubbornly revived, only to see the old man consigned to long-term life support. Like some terrible Herculean quest, the weekend grows and grows into a tangible monster that is going to be either his demise or redemption.
Working with a first-rate cast, and a script by four-time collaborator Paul Schrader (from the novel by former paramedic Joe Connelly), Scorsese finds apocalyptic beauty and humor amid the blood and pavement (BOTD also features the funniest credit line this year: “Hairstylist for Mr. Cage...). One scene in which Frank rescues a drug dealer impaled on a balcony railing while sparks shower the moonlit skyline packs such visual punch you’d think Marty was hoping to land the next Madonna video. The cumulative result is a grudging realization that, like a prison poet, or an irresponsible friend who plays great jazz piano but always insults your mom, tolerance of a multitude of evils is the price we pay for the city that spawned The Met, Broadway, CBGB’s, and Random House. A-
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