BRINGING OUT THE DEAD

BRINGING OUT THE DEAD (1999) **

Reviewed 11/6/99

Scorsese's latest with a screenplay from oft-collaborator Paul Schrader is a terribly noisy, self-serious picture. Even while Robert Richardson's cinematography dazzles, Thelma Schoonmaker's quick edit pacing is numbing. A relentlessly grim examination of an ambulance driver (Nicolas Cage) and the trauma he has accumulated on the job, the film also exaggerates the grittiness of New York's Hell's Kitchen, even cast in the early 90s, beyond semblance with reality. The film's biggest problem is that the characters are all extremes and not quite human. Without the accompanying humanity, life and death isn't the same grave subject. Only Ving Rhames' appearance temporarily lightens the film's cheerless tone.