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Bringing Out The Dead Details

1999 Certificate 18
  • Rated:
  • 60
  • from 4222 members

Martin Scorsese exhilaratingly adapts Joe Connelly's novel about Frank (Nicolas Cage), a paramedic working among the filth and mental desolation of New York City's Hell's Kitchen in the early 1990s. Lately he has been haunted by the visions of a beautiful 18-year-old girl whom he was unable to resuscitate. Soon after, another .. Read more

Starring Nicolas Cage, Patricia Arquette, John Goodman, Ving Rhames
Director Martin Scorsese
Genres Thriller

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Bringing Out The Dead

Martin Scorsese exhilaratingly adapts Joe Connelly's novel about Frank (Nicolas Cage), a paramedic working among the filth and mental desolation of New York City's Hell's Kitchen in the early 1990s. Lately he has been haunted by the visions of a beautiful 18-year-old girl whom he was unable to resuscitate. Soon after, another image begins to torment him, that of Mary (Patricia Arquette), a recovering drug addict who enters Frank's life when he attempts to save her father. His spiral into even further confusion is paralleled with his three driving partners: Larry (a boisterous John Goodman), whose advice to Frank is not to think about all the death and violence; Marcus (a scene-stealing Ving Rhames), a religious fanatic who uses his medical skills as propaganda for the Lord; and Walls (a maniacal Tom Sizemore), a loose cannon who has no sensible grounding whatsoever. In order to escape the madness that is consuming him, Frank asks, unsuccessfully, to be fired. He must ride out the nightmare, trying to redeem the lives of Rose, Mary, and himself in the process. Scorsese uses his camera to capture Frank's wavering mental state with tilted angles and fast-speed photography. In portraying the tormented Frank, Cage dives wholeheartedly into character, delivering another fiery performance.

Starring Nicolas Cage, Patricia Arquette, John Goodman, Ving Rhames, Tom Sizemore, Mary Beth Hurt, Nestor Serrano, Cliff Curtis, Marc Anthony, Aida Turturro, Larry Fessenden, Afemo Omilami, Cynthia Roman
Director Martin Scorsese
Studio WALT DISNEY STUDIOS HOME ENTERTAINMENT
Run time DVD: 1 hr 56 mins
Certificate Certificate 18
Genres Thriller
Language DVD: English
Hearing-impaired English
Subtitles DVD: Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish
Released DVD: 15 Jun 2006
Production year: 1999
Format DVD

  • Critics' reviews (6) of Bringing Out The Dead

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  • 3 stars out of 5

    Martin Scorsese lends his customary intensity and visual razzle-dazzle to this 72-hour insight into the exhausting lives of New York paramedics. The director reunites with his Taxi Driver collaborator Paul Schrader to conjure up a powerful, blackly comic and often hallucinatory portrait of this most emotionally demanding of careers, while Nicolas Cage is perfectly cast as crumbling, sleep-deprived protagonist Frank Pierce. However, the other performances are so unhinged (mad medics Tom Sizemore and Ving Rhames especially), and the episodic encounters so overwrought, that the drama never really grabs as it should. Once again, though, Scorsese proves himself to be one of the most technically creative and thematically audacious film-makers on the planet.

    • Radio Times
    • Posted 29 Jan 2006
  • 3 stars out of 4

    Scorsese revisits familiar territory for him and his audience: hellish streets inhabited by low-life predators and victims; but his perspective has shifted from his customary petty gangsters and psychopaths to the good guys, however unbalanced they may se

    • Halliwell's Film Guide
    • Posted 02 Mar 2006

  • Most helpful member's review of Bringing Out The Dead

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  • 11 out of 12 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 5 stars

    Cleaning Up NYC

    I heard a lot of negative publicity about this film which reunited the director and writer of "Taxi Driver".

    I settled down preparing myself for something average and instead I got a complete treat.

    Nicholas Cage plays a New York ambulance driver who is slowly cracking up under the strain of his job. The film shows the city through his eyes.

    So far, it sounds like just a re-run of "Taxi Driver", only "Bringing Out The Dead" is fill to the brim with the kind of jet-black humour that made "Fight Club" such a riot. Add to that some fantastic cinematography and a riotous soundtrack (high speed, drug-fueled ambulance driving scored by The Clash) and you've got what I think is a complete blast of a film.

    Sure, it may be a little too dark for some tastes, but if you enjoy your humour darker than midnight and find New York fascinating, then you'd be a fool to miss this.

      • Ned0 from W.Yorks
      • Posted 19 Jun 2004 10:13

  • Most recent members' review of Bringing Out The Dead

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  • 4 out of 5 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 3 stars

    A 'feel rough' film

    Nicolas Cage plays a medic who tours, in his ambulance, the same mean streets that Robert De Niro did in his cab in Taxi Driver. The landscape is similarly peopled with whores, pimps, drug pushers and down and outs.

    The feel of the film is similar too: bleak, bleak, BLEAK I TELL YOU!

    With Nicolas Cage in the lead role I was expecting a lot more light relief to be coming my way, but no - it really is a dark and doomy piece of work. It is hard to know what to latch onto about it to give you a reason to watch. I can only really recommend this to someone who is the opposite of depressed (ie, uncontrollably ecstatic) and needs something to give them a bit of a day trip to a different reality. If you need a holiday from your relentless happiness than you should definitely consider renting this.

    But as you see, I'm not giving it a low star count. That's because I was at no stage tempted to turn the film off. Cage keeps your interest as a battered and increasingly desperate man, the plot is episodic rather than rounded but the incidents are compelling and brutally grim, they keep you watching.

    So: no fun, but a watchable portrait nonetheless.

      • bodnotbod from London, England
      • Posted 03 May 2005 17:57

  • News and features

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    The Film

    Martin Scorsese joins Paramount

    • 08 Nov 2006

    Film studio Paramount has given Martin Scorsese a four-year, first-look contract for all of the projects he produces or directs. Scorsese, whose recent movie The Departed is currently in cinemas, can also work for other studios as part of the deal, but Paramount can co-produce or direct any of his projects in the next four years. The director said he was looking forward to working for the studio, "a studio rich in cinematic history and responsible for making some of my favourite films" Read more

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Rating breakdown

4,222 Member ratings
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184
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544
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667
  • 60
940
  • 50
528
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452
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287
  • 20
277
  • 10
128

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      • Martin Scorsese exhilaratingly adapts Joe Connelly's novel about Frank (Nicolas Cage), a paramedic working among the filth and mental desolation of New York City's Hell's Kitchen in the early 1990s. ...