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BRINGING OUT THE DEAD review
Well folks, here I am at the Phoenix, Arizona airport
listening to Volume Three of LOST IN SPACE
music... the latest chapter in the fantastic Crescendo
series of Irwin Allen televised epics. More John
Williams... more Salter, Stein and LaSalle... What
better music to sit in an airport and pray for freedom?
I hate airports... there is the standardized Orwellian
watch those around you... study their movements...
don't trust anyone... eat bad food, buy bad clothes
and sit in chairs designed to make you want to get up
and wander... the airport.
So it is that while I sit here I find myself pondering
and wanting to make better use out of this time...
Naturally my thoughts turned to you. I must write.
BRINGING OUT THE DEAD....
That's right... Yeah... yeah... I know you wanna hear
about the screenings I just had for SLEEPY
HOLLOW or JOAN OF ARC... but while sitting in
this airport watching all these people wandering to
and fro... out this window watching people with snub
nosed lightsabers directing steel winged birdies of
death to their umbilical cords... Yeah... I'm in a
BRINGING OUT THE DEAD mood.
First off... why am I writing about it so late... Well...
the main reason is I don't like seeing a Scorsese film
with a large audience. You see... It just doesn't feel
right to me. I want to discover his films the way I
always do... Also... I want to pay... Yes, PAY for my
Scorsese film. So I pick a dead movie going night...
(Monday) a couple of weeks after it's been out... and I
go.
There is usually me... and about 4 others. I sit back a
little bit further from the screen than usual... I find I
don't want to get too close to Scorsese's visions lest I
fall in.
Now I've been purposefully staying away from the
reviews for this film, but I heard this was 'one of his
weakest films'. Ok...
Father Geek and I walk in... his second time to see the
film... and we take our seats. I began before the
screening to blur out of existence even the few scant
people that exist here in my world. Even now... the
airport is going away... the roars of planes a distant
rumble now... That lady being worked on by the
Phoenix Fire Dept... sitting in that wheel chair... It's
amazing... One never thinks about becoming sick...
having a heart attack or fainting in an airport... but
yet... there it is... right there.
Looking at that guy with the clipboard... filling out
the paperwork... grumpy face... as though he's pissed
about something...
Yeah... these guys are human beings...
That's what I love about BRINGING OUT THE
DEAD... It's a film about the redundancy of the
universe of an Ambulance driver...
Imagine if you will that everyday of your life
beginning the day you got out of education... you had
to drive the streets of New York... On call for the
dead, the dying, the bleeding, the addicted, the crazy,
the beaten... the broken.
How many sad endings before a temporarily happy
one? How many times do you save someone, only to
be their deathcart 5 years later? Will you remember
their face? What about the faces of all the people you
lose.
Until this film, my favorite emergency care scene in a
movie is in EMPIRE OF THE SUN, when Christian
Bale is going to... 'bring her back'.. and her soul
escapes as the bomb falls upon Hiroshima.
This film begins with such a scene... Nicholas Cage,
down on his luck... beaten down by the world he
scampers about in. He gets a call... Heart Attack...
Can you imagine walking into a family reunion type
of room with the mission to... Bring a dead man back
to life? Not just a man, like he'd be on a street corner
horizontal... but here... in this environment... He's a
father... a husband... a loved one. Tears are shed...
screams are unleashed. Here you look about the
room... you can see the life he lived... the bed he lived
and loved upon. You see what books he read, his
favorite reading chair...
You have to block that out... just do your duty... three
puffs and pump that heart back to active motion. You
ask the question, "How long has he been out?"
"10 minutes," you hear from his beautiful daughter...
you like her... you'd love to ask her out on a date, but
you just realized her father will most likely remain
dead... or become a vegetable. Your role has
officially just become the comforter of the living and
the hauler of the dead.
This is your life.
Sure...... Yeah... Starting out you could handle it...
but how many nights till you begin thinking strange
thoughts about it all.
How long till you begin recognizing street corners
where you lost a beautiful girl? Or found that child
broken in half by a taxi cab?
This isn't ER. This is grunt work...
This is the universe that Paul Schrader and Martin
Scorsese take us this time.
The film is hallucinatory... it's very Kerouac... stream
of consciousness... You get the idea you are one of
the loose marbles rolling about Nicholas Cage's brain
pan.
Had I hated the story, I would have loved the
visuals... Had I hated the visuals, I would have loved
the audio. This is Scorsese territory. The colors of
the city... the movement of his scenes... the slight of
hand with camera movement...
Scorsese is the consummate filmmaker. Able to take
you inside someone's mind, see their perception of the
world around them. Put you in their shoes. Now...
that doesn't mean you'll like being in those shoes.
I think GOODFELLAS is a brilliant film, but I don't
want to watch it again because I really do feel that
Marty captures what it is to be a common Mafioso
suburban thug. I don't like their wives, houses,
clothes, lifestyles... I love their banter and paranoia...
their brutality... but not their banality. But...
Scorsese and his writers have an uncanny knack of
exposing the strange normalcy to the bizarre.
Now... some folks have been knocking the... ahem...
brutality that Tom Sizemore's caffeine jacked
bloodthirsty cadaver jockey spends the last segment
of the film hungry for.
Except... My father knew this ambulance driver once
back in the sixties that's sister had been raped... so he
tracked the guy down... beat the shit out of him and
took his cock and balls so that he would rape no
more. Now... I've been hearing that story since the
earliest memory... so in my eyes... Sizemore is toned
down.
Now... why are so many not grocking the great
Scorsese's latest? Well... I think for some it may be
one of the same reasons I disliked PUSHING TIN.
We don't want to think of the people we entrust our
lives to as being strung out... three breaths from being
in a padded cell.
But folks... they are people... Folks like you and me.
Not every mailman is a gun-toting psycho... but there
have been a few. Not every taxi driver kills pimps...
but there have problem been a few. This movie is a
look at these guys... in this extreme neighborhood.
If you really want to be disturbed about Ambulance
drivers check out the fantastic MOTHER, JUGGS
and SPEED. A more upbeat, but possibly more
disturbing look at the world of sirens and gurneys.
Watch the BRINGING OUT THE DEAD... and be
glad you don't have to go up and down these wet
streets filled with pushers and prostitutes....
strung-outs and elderly... This is a street you don't
want to drive down.
Once again I've found myself in a theater enthralled
by the canvas that Scorsese dazzled me with. This is
a wonderful companion piece for TAXI DRIVER...
perhaps even a bit more nihilistic as well... Of course
that's just up to your own perceptions.
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+ Expand All
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Well, since all those nasty talkbacks dissing this somwhat flawed but still fascinating and well-crafted entry into the Scorcese cannon, have been deleted. Let me be first to say that this moview was well worth my time.
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Just look at the talk back response so far. This movie is a failure, but not for lack of trying. Harry, you're right about one thing, the audio is tremendous, but the rest of it had me sawing logs (except for Ving Rhames--he was great). Nick Cage stumbles through this movie becuase he's got nothing else to do. There's just no story here. At least we saw Travis Bickle react to the world. In BOTD, the only reactive people are his partners, and they're just manifestations of biological urges. I can't even see what he saw in this material. Dr. West out.
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I gotta chuck my two cents in here and disagree with the poster who crucified -- LAST TEMPTATION-style -- Marty's latest work.
Gosh, man, what movie did you see? Like Harry said, DEAD is a great companion piece to TAXY DRIVER and, just perhaps, flesh wound more nihilistic.
Great DOPPING, kick-rectum perfs and a pace that goes hand-in-hand with the tension.
Marty fires on all cylinders once again. -
I must have seen a different film than the rest of you because i absolutely loved this movie. Great performances, funny and entertaining. This film may have had some small problems but I dont go to films to nitpick, I go to be entertained and this film delivered.
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This one sucked ass for a Martin Scorcese picture. Someone get me a fucking weiner before I die. It was okay, nothing to really recommend to anybody.
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Well, pretty damn good at least.Plenty of folks found BOTD to be disappointing, but I thought it was JUST FINE. 'Nuff said.
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Martin Scorses's "Bringing out the Dead" is some of the most kinetic, brilliant film-making I( or anyone for that matter) have seen in a loooong time. The storyline, the visuals, the soundtrack; everything fits together perfectly to make one of the best films of the year. In 99's top three, along with "Three Kings"and "The Man on the Moon". Beautiful Marty, beautiful.
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it was powerful and moving and funny as all hell in many a part. "he got better" gotta love those python jokes!
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It wasn't quite as meatheaded as I expected. It was essentially CSI London with Holmes and Watson as bi-sexual lovers who like a bit of pussy now and again, with time clearly on Watson's mind which is why he decided to become a breeder and marry some bitch, rather then solve crimes and suck Holmes cock. Anyway, I actually liked it even though Guy Richie isn’t quite as strong a visualist as the material needed. In the end it’s Sherlock Begins and delivers the promise of Moriarty as the next films Big Bad which suggests a sequel that aspires to be this series Dark Knight. If they were to do that, I think it would be a fantastic idea if they were to adapt Mark Frost’s The List of Seven as the basis of the next movie. I’ve been a fan of that book since I first read it in the mid-90’s, after seeing a glowing review of it in an issue of Fangoria. If you haven’t read it, I would implore you to do so at your most earliest convenience. P.S. Devin is a pedo.
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