movie of the week:            sunday  october  24, 1999

Studio:Paramount ,Prod.Scott Rudin-Cappa/De Fina .Dir.Martin Scorsese. Stars: Nicolas Cage , Patricia Arquette, John Goodman, Ving Rhames, Tom Sizemore and Marc Anthony.Written by Joe Connelly II and Paul Schrader .Release date:Fri. Oct. 22,1999..Theate20 scr.Movie played on 1. 40 to 50 patrons.Review written: Sat. Dec. 11

It has taken me a long while to bring myself to write this review, and the reason is simple. I always think of  Martin Scorsese as a mentor and god (small letters) among movie directors. I allude to him on the main page to my movie review section, and I believe that he is one of, if not,  the world's greatest living director. I saw this film on Oct. 24, nearly two months ago, and have not posted a review to my page since seeing this, because, to put it bluntly, I really didn't like the movie, and felt somewhat hypocritical about posting a somewhat negative review. Of course, since I love some aspect of even the most deplorable of movies, I do give this a 6 of 10 on the Mikometer, so I am not saying the film is a piece of trash. Merely, I didn't feel it was the film I wanted to see from  Scorsese at this time. I have one really big beef with the narrative. There is no payoff. I left the theater feeling unresolved and unsatisfied. It is the first Scorsese movie that has not fulfilled me, and this disappointed.

I have read the reviews comparing Bringing Out the Dead with Taxi Driver. As Casino can be called a bookend with Goodfellas, Bringing Out the Dead, is, indeed, the bookend to Taxi Driver. (Taxi Driver with ambulances, etc.) Taxi Driver had a payoff, however, and even though it was misunderstood at the time of it's release, the film answered all of it's questions. I did not feel that Dead does this. I don't think Schrader needed to end the film with a shootout, but maybe the placement of the film's most unnerving setpiece, the rescue at the drug dealer's house, could have been inserted farther into the movie. I do not want to, like Gene Siskel used to do, write my own version of the film. The creative team makes their movie. We only watch and feel, either fulfilled or that we wasted our time. I will employ the metaphor that Marty's sermon wasn't as thorough as usual (as in the underrated Kundun) and Dead was, to me, dead on arrival. I needed something that I didn't get from the film, and that bothered me. It must have bothered the audience in general, because Dead didn't bring out the patrons. Of course I hope this doesn't mean Marty will have problems financing his next picture. Perhaps this was exactly what it was supposed to be, and though I didn't understand the vagaries of subtlety inherent in the piece upon first viewing, it will make more sense upon repeated viewings. A great picture is for the ages, not for one simple viewing, and perhaps a second viewing will unearth untold clues which will dictate that the movie that was made is perfect as is.

However, I still feel, in light of the funding effect, that I just wasn't as thrilled with this movie as I hoped I would be.
All that now said, Nicolas Cage gives his best performance ever, and I'm glad he appears in this movie, and not another actioner about hijacking planes to Las Vegas. The performance doesn't remind me of his Leaving Las Vegas persona as much as the one he gave in Vampire's Kiss. The great thing about Cage is his ability to imbue the most disheveled, uncertain, over the edge types with a certain flair and likability. The audience can identify with him even as it is cringing, and his presence here is one of the great plusses of casting. Patricia Arquette, who is no stranger to strange roles, (The dreadful Stigmata opened a few weeks before Dead, and of course she is unforgettable in David Lynch's Lost Highway). As Mary Burke, the drug riddled daughter of the first patient we see Cage's Frank Pierce "save", Arquette actually seems as if she has been given a "normal" role, and the twists and turns her character goes through as we encounter her true nature are very well exhibited. There is truly a great role ahead for Patricia in the future, and this film (if not Stigmata or Goodbye Lover for that matter) is a step in the right direction.

Since I am writing this review so long after the movie has in fact disappeared from theaters, I am of course not dwelling upon the plot. Nicolas Cage, as Frank Pierce, is a decent man in an indecent profession, haunted by the ghosts of the people he has failed to save, and desperately trying to piece together a sanity within the insanity through his relationship with Mary Burke, and he finds he cannot escape the insanity no matter what he does. (Theme is always better to write than plot in my reviews. I hate to read about what I am about to see in other reviews.)  The film is rife with Catholic imagery, startling jump cuts, hazy lighting, steaming manholes, all the usual suspects of a Schrader-Scorsese collaboration. The only thing missing is Robert DeNiro as the head of the hospital. Marty himself makes his presence felt as one of the dispatchers heard on the ambulance radio.

One particular beef I have with Bringing Out the Dead is the "digital jumpcutting" specifically in the ambulance cab with Tom Sizemore and Cage. I know this is supposed to evoke a "drug addled" mentality, but to me it is just too manic and unnecessary. Too many films use the digital editing effects (and I'm not entirely positive the effect was made using an Avid editor, but I suspect it was) that speed up action, The Matrix comes to mind, and I really think this is belaboring a process. It is becoming as grating as the record skip sounds that David E. Kelley keeps using on Ally McBeal.
Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times says that this is a film you admire rather than warm up to. I will agree. I do admire certain aspects of the filmmaking, although Marty certainly has travelled the territory before, and with a much better result. When you stop to think that he even made a striking and memorable film of Cape Fear, even though the original is classic cinema, it is doubly disappointing that Bringing Out the Dead is not up to snuff.
I will await the next Scorsese as intently as I awaited this one. And I will watch it again on DVD and perhaps see something I missed which will turn my thoughts around concerning my disappointment. But as for now, I am disappointed. This is not a film I recommend for casual viewing. Go to see it if you are happy, and feel a great need to be depressed. Frank doesn't find his salvation. And Marty hasn't answered his questions.