Left Field Cinema

Bringing out the Dead is a Nicholas Cage, Ving Rhames fuel-ride that just so happens to be written for the screen by Paul Schrader & directed by the king of New York film, Martin Scorsese. Released in 1999 this amounts to Martin’s acid-offering, crazier than the comparative After Hours, Mean Streets & Taxi Driver, the use of music, vice even makes New York, New York look tame, is it a better film out of this handful, to me it is, I’m sure my minority is the smallest minority, though a lot of people seem to love this or simply have not seen it, the Nicholas Cage is a turn-on, he one of many brilliances in the movie.

Considered a neo-noir, to me a psycho-noir, we’re offered the story of Frank Pierce aka Cage who “ever since I was a kid I wanted to be a paramedic to save people’s lives” which he does to his own personal determent, working overnight shifts with Larry (John Goodman) Tom (Tom Sizemore) & Marcus (Ving Rhames), on three consecutive summer nights, whilst unsuccessfully trying to get himself sacked, he mops around like the ghosts he sees, the ones who died on his bill, now on his conscience a pregnant woman he couldn’t save, Rose. Through saving her father, Frank meets Mary (Patricia Arquette) in the ER waiting area, she is I’m sure one of many in this part of New York who knows crack head (Marc Anthony) & drug dealer (Cliff Curtis).

It’s hard to say whether Schrader’s screenplay was the strongest given his ability had waned by 1999, based on a novel by paramedic Joe Connelly, its Scorsese’s direction that brings most of the nightmarish humour, sickening angles and lighting accompany a Rolling Stones driven soundtrack. Cage gives a measured, edge-of-madness performance, as a narrator he’s always nastily enjoyable, it’s Ving Rhames who’s most, extravagant, like Cage’s Ben Sanderson character his a charming, womaniser, scared of nothing he’s a crazy, if believable paramedic, like the camera lost in the neon streets of New York, were Marc Anthony’s performance roams, from intensity to cartoonism at least he’s in keeping with the atmosphere. John Goodman & Tom Sizemore are on a free leach, as big bubbly characters living life fast, cheap and out of control.

At 118 minutes its Scorsese’s shortest film since After Hours and probably his best between Goodfellas & The Departed, Patricia Arquette & Cliff Curtis add to this, the storytelling has a true mixture of the way of life, the three act and conclusion have an emotional payoff if you truly go with Frank, Cage actually is funny and desperate, the narration adds so much more here than Casino, the presentation of a simple weekend gives atmosphere that is more present than in Scorsese’s’ two following films. For some like me, Bringing out the Dead feels more accomplished than Taxi Driver, succeeding further in humour and in that are men who can’t deal with New York and city life, as with Mean Streets I felt off-motives and tomato sauce took me out that and Taxi Driver.

Before 1995 Cage and to a lesser extend Scorsese we’re far better, Cage has always looked forty-years old, getting better and better with charismatic, delivery and film choices till Leaving Las Vegas in 1995, arguably the best Vegas picture and similar to Wild at Heart without the profanity and obnoxiousness, the same year Scorsese was in Vegas for Casino, one of most excitingly, over-indulgent films ever made.

Cage has gone off with that suspect is a big ego and alpha male attitude, occasionally rocking-the-shit with say 2002’s Adaptation, interestingly he should have won a second Best Actor even though he has been in some of the worst blockbusters ever. Scorsese has been getting better and better since, Bringing Out The Dead though shouldn’t be looked over for Cage and Schrader, who at least here are back on their Oscar-winning form, in their style that is, wild, furiousness, you’d think they’re the sort of auto-destructive artists who’d smash their Oscars, I’ll leave my own statement that simply shows my love for this Scorsese picture, not that he’s ever made a bad film, Bringing Out The Dead, his best since 1990...?

Leonard Boulevard