Anyway, I made a beeline for Martin Scorsese's latest, Bringing Out the Dead (the title, strange to say, is not the only line it borrows from Monty Python and the Holy Grail). I really wanted to like this movie; I think Scorsese is the greatest living director in the world, and he's a fascinating guy besides. And I was piqued by the novelty of a Scorsese film in which the protagonist tries to save people as opposed to killing them or beating the crap out of them (okay, so the Dalai Lama wasn't exactly kicking ass and taking down names in Kundun, but you know what I mean).
Bringing Out the Dead has its moments of brilliance and gallows humor, and Nicolas Cage gives a performance well worth watching, but the movie had some deadly dull stretches, not to mention a flaccid romantic subplot between Cage and Patricia Arquette (gee, wonder how she got the job. It certainly wasn't her acting ability) and a deeply unsatisfying ending. Scorsese's not resting on his laurels: there's a jumpy energy to the film; he takes on the primally resonant theme of a man seeking redemption; and he's got some nifty camera angles, lighting (great use of ambulance lights), and editing tricks... but in the end the film as a whole just doesn't equal the sum of its parts.
Cage plays a paramedic in New York who's burnt out on his job and seeing the ghosts of people he failed to save. For most of the movie, Cage would have been terrific even if he hadn't done any acting: his soulful face alone conveys the tormented weariness of a man who can't even sleep anymore, who sustains himself on whiskey and coffee. He looks like shit at the beginning of the movie, and his face only gets more haggard and haunted. But, of course, Cage does act, excellently as always; he's especially good at the dark humor his character finds in destroying himself. His paramedic partners are played with great gusto by John Goodman, the "normal" one (if you see the movie, you'll see why that's a relative term); Ving Rhames as a cross between Barry White and Elmer Gantry; and especially Tom Sizemore as a guy who crossed the border into nutso a long time ago. Scorsese has an entertaining vocal cameo as an ambulance dispatcher.
It's a shame this movie didn't turn out better than it did; all the elements are there, but for some reason I can't quite pinpoint, they just didn't add up. Still, I'll pick an ambitious-if-middling film by Scorsese over the best Adam Sandler flick any day.
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