Taglines: Saving a Life is the ultimate rush.
Bringing Out the Dead movie storyline. An Easter story. Frank is a Manhattan medic, working graveyard in a two-man ambulance team. He’s burned out, exhausted, seeing ghosts, especially a young woman he failed to save six months’ before, and no longer able to save people: he brings in the dead. We follow him for three nights, each with a different partner.
Larry, who thinks about dinner, Marcus, who looks to Jesus, and Tom, who wallops people when work is slow. Frank befriends the daughter of a heart victim he brings in; she’s Mary, an ex-junkie, angry at her father but now hoping he’ll live. Frank tries to get fired, tries to quit, and keeps coming back, to work and to Mary, in need of his own rebirth.
Bringing Out the Dead is a 1999 American drama film directed by Martin Scorsese, written by Paul Schrader, based on the novel by Joe Connelly and starring Nicolas Cage, Patricia Arquette, John Goodman, Ving Rhames, and Tom Sizemore. Though a flop at the box office, the film received very positive reviews from critics and was also the last North American title to be released on LaserDisc.
About the Story
In Manhattan in the early 1990s, Frank Pierce is a burned-out paramedic who works the graveyard shift in a two-man ambulance team with various different partners. Usually exhausted and depressed, he has not saved any patients in months and begins to see the ghosts of those lost, especially a homeless adolescent girl named Rose whose face appears on the bodies of others.
Frank and his first partner Larry respond to a call by the family of a man named Mr. Burke who has entered cardiac arrest. Frank befriends Mr. Burke’s distraught daughter Mary, a former junkie. Frank discovers Mary was childhood friends with Noel, a brain-damaged drug addict and delinquent who is frequently sent to the hospital.
After a few minor calls (one involving Noel), Frank and Larry respond to a shooting and he tends to one of the surviving victims. Frank notices two vials of a drug named “Red Death”, a new form of heroin that is plaguing the streets of New York City, roll out from the victim’s sleeve which implies it was a shooting by a rival drug gang. While in the back of the ambulance with Frank and Noel the victim goes into denial and repents his drug dealing ways but dies before they can reach the hospital.
The next day Frank is paired with his second partner Marcus, an eccentric and religious man. They respond to the call of a man in a goth club who has suffered a heart attack. Frank diagnoses that he has in fact suffering from a heroin overdose caused by Red Death. As Frank injects the man with the antidote, Marcus starts a prayer circle with the baffled club-goers and just as his preaching climaxes the overdosed man becomes conscious again.
On the way back to the hospital Frank swings by Mary’s apartment building to tell her that her father’s condition is improving. Frank and Marcus then respond to a call by a young Puerto Rican man whose girlfriend is giving birth to twins despite his claims they are both virgins, calling it a miracle. Frank rushes one baby to the hospital but it later dies. In a moment of desperation Frank starts drinking and Marcus soon joins in, crashing the ambulance into a parked car.
The following morning, Frank sees a stressed Mary leaving the hospital and follows her to an apartment block; she tells Frank that she’s going to visit a friend and he escorts her to the room. After a while Frank goes to the room and barges his way in the door, only to discover it’s in fact a crack house run by a friendly dealer named Cy Coates.
Mary has turned back to drugs to cope with her father’s fluctuating condition and Frank tries to get her to leave but he is dissuaded by Cy who offers Frank some pills. In another moment of desperation he swallows the drugs and begins to hallucinate, seeing more ghosts of patients and the moment when he tried to save Rose. Once over, he grabs Mary and carries her out of the building. While visiting a comatose Mr. Burke in the hospital Frank starts hearing Burke’s voice in his head, telling Frank to let him die but he resuscitates Burke instead.
Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Patricia Arquette, John Goodman, Ving Rhames, Tom Sizemore, Marc Anthony, Mary Beth Hurt, Cliff Curtis, Aida Turturro, Sonja Sohn, Cynthia Roman
Screenplay by: Paul Schrader
Production Design by: Dante Ferretti
Cinematography by: Robert Richardson
Film Editing by: Thelma Schoonmaker
Costume Design by: Rita Ryack
Set Decoration by: William F. Reynolds
Art Direction by: Robert Guerra
Music by: Elmer Bernstein
MPAA Rating: R for gritty violent content, drug use and language.
Distributed by: Paramount Pictures (North America), Buena Vista Pictures (International)
Release Date: October 22, 1999
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