Bringing Out the Dead

Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage) has been driving the streets of New York non-stop for two days and three nights. He no longer feels the need for sleep or food. With sirens blaring, he races through the night, looking for the dying and injured. Like the last angel, he resists the degeneration of city life, but he is frustrated by the fact that he hasn’t saved anyone for a long time. His colleagues who sit like shadows beside him in the ambulance complete his nightmare: Larry (John Goodman) is obsessed by food, Marcus (Ving Rhames) is the fatalist religious and Tom Walls (Tom Sizemore) is agressive. They are all burn outs who live on caffeine, booze, pills and black humour. With Scorsese as director and Paul Schrader as scriptwriter, it is no coincidence that Bringing Out the Dead displays similarities with Taxi Driver. The nighttime streets of New York, filled with junkies, prostitutes and drunkards in danger of dying a pointless death at any moment, are the cast-iron backdrop to this story about manic resistance to urban decay. The fragmented perspective from the racing ambulance leaves a lot to the imagination and forms a brilliant visualisation – not just in a technical way – of the inner world of the protagonist fighting against hell. Cinema on the edge of your seat.