Bringing Out the Dead is a 1999 American neo-noir drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader, based on the homonymous novel by Joe Connelly.[2][3] It stars Nicolas Cage, Ving Rhames, John Goodman,Tom Sizemore and Patricia Arquette. The film was a flop at the box office but received very positive reviews from critics.
Plot
Set in Manhattan in the early 1990s, Frank Pierce (Cage) is a burned-out paramedic who works the graveyard shift in a two-man ambulance team with various different partners. Usually exhausted and depressed, he has not saved any patients in months and begins to see the ghosts of those lost, especially a homeless teenage girl named Rose whose face appears on the bodies of others. Frank and his first partner Larry (Goodman) respond to a call by the family of a man named Mr. Burke who has entered cardiac arrest. Frank befriends Mr. Burke's distraught daughter Mary (Arquette), an ex-junkie. Frank discovers Mary was childhood friends with Noel (Anthony), a mentally ill drug addict and delinquent who is frequently sent to the hospital.
After a few minor calls (one involving Noel), Frank and Larry respond to a shooting and he tends to one of the surviving victims. Frank notices two vials of a drug named "Red Death", a new form of heroin that has started plaguing the streets of New York and caused cardiac arrest calls to sky-rocket, roll out from the victim's sleeve which implies it was a shooting by a rival drug gang. While in the back of the ambulance with Frank and Noel the victim goes into denial and repents his drug dealing ways but dies before they can reach the hospital.
The next day Frank is paired with his second partner Marcus (Rhames), an eccentric but religious man. They respond to the call of a man in a gothic club who has suffered a heart attack. Frank diagnoses that he has in fact suffering from a heroin overdose caused by Red Death. As Frank injects the man with a chemical, Marcus starts a prayer circle with the baffled club-goers and just as his preaching climaxes the overdosed man becomes conscious again. On the way back to the hospital Frank swings by Mary's apartment building to tell her that her father's condition is improving. Frank and Marcus then respond to a call by a Puerto Rican man whose girlfriend is giving birth to twins despite his claims they are both virgins, calling it a miracle. Frank rushes one baby to the hospital but it later dies. In a moment of desperation Frank starts drinking and Marcus soon joins in, crashing the ambulance into a parked car.
The following morning, Frank sees a stressed Mary leaving the hospital and follows her to an apartment block; she tells Frank that she's going to visit a friend and he escorts her to the room. After a while Frank goes to the room and barges his way in the door, only to discover it's in fact a drug den run by a friendly dealer named Cy Coates (Curtis). Mary has turned back to drugs to cope with her father's fluctuating condition and Frank tries to get her to leave but he is dissuaded by Cy who offers Frank some pills. In another moment of desperation he swallows the drugs and begins to hallucinate, seeing more ghosts of patients and the moment when he tried to save Rose. Once over, he grabs Mary and carries her out of the building. While visiting a comatose Mr. Burke in the hospital Frank starts hearing Burke's voice in his head, telling Frank to let him die but he resuscitates Burke instead.
The next shift Frank is paired with his third partner Tom Wolls (Sizemore), an optimistic man with violent tendencies. At this point Frank is slowly beginning to lose his mind - while tending to a suicidal junkie Frank manages to scare the patient away. The pair are then called to Cy's drug den where another shooting has occurred, however Cy was instead thrown off the balcony and impaled on an iron railing below. Frank holds on to Cy as the other emergency services cut the railing but Cy and Frank are flung off the edge although they are pulled back up. Cy then thanks Frank for saving his life - the first patient Frank has saved in months. Afterwards Frank agrees to help Tom beat up Noel, but Frank is distracted and Noel flees into an area beneath the houses. Tom and Frank chase after Noel but Frank starts to hallucinate again, snapping out of it just as he comes upon Tom beating Noel with his bat. During his second visit to Mr. Burke, the voice again pleas to let him die but this time Frank removes Burke's breathing apparatus causing him to enter cardiac arrest, killing him. Frank then heads to Mary's apartment to inform her that her father has died but seems to be mostly unaffected by the news of her father's death. Frank is invited in, falling asleep on Mary.
Soundtrack[edit]
Track listing[edit]
- "T.B. Sheets" - Van Morrison
- "Janie Jones" - The Clash
- "You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory" - Johnny Thunders
- "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" - R.E.M.
- "I'm So Bored with the USA" - The Clash
- "Red Red Wine" - UB40
- "Nowhere to Run" - Martha Reeves and the Vandellas
- "Too Many Fish in the Sea" - The Marvelettes
- "Rang Tang Ding Dong (I Am a Japanese Sandman)" - The Cellos
- "Rivers of Babylon" - The Melodians
- "Combination of the Two" - Big Brother & The Holding Company
- "Bell Boy" - The Who
- "So What" - Jane's Addiction
Production
The film was part of a trio of films in the late 1990s starring Nicolas Cage that were co-productions of Paramount Pictures and Touchstone Pictures, with Face/Off(1997) with John Travolta and Snake Eyes (1998) with Gary Sinise. The opening song on the movie is "T.B. Sheets", a lengthy blues-influenced song, about a young girl who lies dying in a hospital bed, surrounded by the heavy smell of death and disease. It was written by Van Morrison and included on his 1967 album, Blowin' Your Mind!. The song was originally going to be used in Taxi Driver.Both the director Martin Scorsese and Queen Latifah provided the voice of the ambulance dispatchers.Reception
Critical response
The film was well received by critics and holds a 71% 'Fresh' rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 104 reviews.[5] Roger Ebert gave it a perfect four star rating, writing, "To look at Bringing Out the Dead--to look, indeed, at almost any Scorsese film--is to be reminded that film can touch us urgently and deeply".
1.
Does the movie accurately depict the job of an
EMT?
2.
Does the movie accurately depict life in the US?
3.
How does the music enhance the themes of the
movie?
4.
Describe Frank.
5.
Did you like this movie? Why or why not?
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