Bringing Out the Dead by Martin Scorsese, starring Nicholas Cage, is an edgy and odd, but powerful, film. Despite the lack of a material plot, the film has clear themes and character growth that guide over a two-hour duration. Those searching for profound and meaningful material similar to Taxi Driver and Goodfellas or Cage's Leaving Las Vegas from the director will not be disappointed. But those looking for a film that hops on the bandwagon in the emergency room following hit TV shows such as ER, and Chicago Hope may find this film too much of an intellectual challenge.
The audience will understand that the Big Apple in the pre-Giuliani era is still a crime-polluted mess and that hospitals are an equally big problem. The movie quickly shows us streets lined with prostitutes and hospital hallways lined with stretchers, just if any doubt lingers. Frank Peirce (Nicholas Cage), an ambulance driver who has seen all of it, emerges from there. Peirce will endure several drastic steps for the next 58 hours (three nights, two days), and the viewer looks on in an almost voyeuristic way.
The numerous people who come into his ambulance and left it pronounced dead, Peirce fringes on insanity in the film. "From the drug users to the suicidal to the "just plain crazy," he has them all. It provides a fascinating juxtaposition: the mad world vs the insane workers of society. And then there are the corpses he always sees, letting him see more final moments than the average citizen's tolerance might allow. He creates immunity, like all other drivers, but the shield is lowered during those 58 hours.
The deranged and desperately dark humour you only find funny about 3:00 AM when you are out of caffeine but forced to stay alive is sprinkled throughout Bringing out the Dead. Scorsese creates the setting so well that the jokes not only work but also come to rely on their comedic relief as a way to survive the film. Highlights include the numerous calls that come through the ambulance radio (older woman kidnapped by her cat, etc.) and one scene in which Peirce and an eccentric fellow driver (Ving Rhames) discover a supposedly dead victim, but for his stoned friends, stage a dramatically overdone revival.
Another iconic director offered us his view of New York City by trailing a character over a few days. Stanley Kubrick depicted an upper-class, clandestine and twisted culture in Eyes Wide Shut that seemed to work entirely independently. Scorsese's study of paramedics is somewhat similar. The men we see run the night shift and are segregated from society. They know each other, understand the ins and outs of their colleagues and are also used to some of the same drug and alcohol calls from individuals who never learn their lesson and turn in and out of the hospital's doors.
For a movie that is over two decades old, it is still incredibly harrowing and thought-provoking.