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Bringing Out The Dead Details

1999 Certificate 18
  • 60
  • from 4311 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • Most helpful member's review of Bringing Out The Dead

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  • 11 out of 12 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 5.0 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 ... more

      • Ned0 from W.Yorks
  • Most recent members' review of Bringing Out The Dead

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  • 5 out of 6 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 1.0 star [Highly rated reviewer]

    Garbage

    The film left me in the same emotional mood as that I had when I left Wembley Arena after a Steps Concert.

    I don't care whether he's Mr.... more

      • Robert Dawson from Cardiff,Wales.
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4,311 Member ratings
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  • 60
963
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283
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129

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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. ...