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| Directed by Martin Scorsese; Starring Nicolas Cage, Patricia Arquette, John Goodman, Ving Rhames, Tom Sizemore, Marc Anthony, Cliff Curtis, Mary Beth Hurt, and Aida Turturro |
There are many reasons that I have become a film critic. One thing is that I am aspiring film director, hoping to spend some time in the lights of modern films, so that I might have my own creations released to a wide audience one day. Another reason is that I have spent years working with films as both resource expert and historian. But the main reason is in one word: directors. I have grown up looking up to all kinds of filmmakers, viewing, studying, and telling of their works. Whenever I’m asked the five things that define me as both a film critic and a filmmaker I always answer Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman, Martin Scorsese, and David Lean. Those five people have made films that have changed me as a person. But the thing is that four out of five have been either dead or semi-retired throughout my lifetime. The only one that has been prolific while I grew up was Scorsese. His films have defined my entire generation of avid film viewers with modern classics like The Last Temptation of Christ, After Hours, GoodFellas, The King of Comedy, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, and Raging Bull. In fact I’d say, and I’m sure I’m not alone on this, that I have never disliked a Scorsese film. That s still true with Bringing Out the Dead.
Bringing Out the Dead is not Scorsese at his best (interesting since this was written by Affliction director Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Raging Bull for Scorsese), not quite a GoodFellas or even a Casino, but the film still delivers a great pleasure. It’s frantic and crazy, not quite a normal place for the more laid back Scorsese film, but it works for what the story is about. Telling the story of the descent into madness that occurs to a New York ambulance driver (Cage), the film finds the right beat by being crazy. The off-beat scenarios that the driver Frank Pierce goes through are so off the wall that any distant direction of it would not work. Scorsese and cinematographer Robert Richardson know what they are doing and do it right. When Frank finds himself obsessed with a woman (Arquette) whose father he saved (an interesting change from what happened in Eyes Wide Shut), Scorsese throws him into her path on a regular basis so that the story can grow, a slight change of pace from the way he had Travis Bickle interact with Jodie Foster and Cybil Shepherd in Taxi Driver.
One thing that I found most interesting about the film is that it shows Frank paired with three different partners, each one with their own personality. The John Goodman and Ving Rhames partners are both interesting, but the one that interested me the most was Tom Sizemore as burning fuse Tom Walls. Sizemore put so much anger and uneasiness in the character that I found more in this performance than any other in the film, even the unbelievable Cage.
Scorsese is on the right track with the film, but he still does have some problems. The film is way too long. Sure there is quite a bit to say, but most of it is said within the first hour, leaving the second, for the most part, rather repetitive. Scorsese uses music well in the film, he just uses it too much, repeating the same three or four songs over and over. Scorsese directs the film so well that it is easy to forgive him for any and all mistakes. As a film Bringing Out the Dead is great, for a Scorsese film it is lackluster.
