AllMovie

Set in the recently departed past of pre-Rudy Giuliani New York, Bringing Out the Dead (1999) reunites Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader for another, different night crawl through a yet to be sanitized Hell's Kitchen. The manholes still belch Stygian steam and the protagonist still exists on the edge of sanity, but this time Nicolas Cage's ambulance driver makes a rocky ascent toward a tentative salvation rather than repeating Taxi Driver's (1976) descent into an ultra-violent inferno. Scorsese's customary visual brio and musical panache are amply displayed in such set pieces as a visit to a drug dealer's lair that climaxes with a victim enjoying a burst of "fireworks," while John Goodman, radio dispatchers Queen Latifah and Scorsese, and especially Ving Rhames add mordant humor to Cage's waking nightmare. Though Bringing Out the Dead pulsates with energy, chaos, and very brief rests, the ceaseless nature of the paramedic's job became a narrative frustration for critics and viewers who expected such a motion-filled picture to actually go somewhere. Even so, Bringing Out the Dead has enough moments of moviemaking courage and beauty to confirm Scorsese's place as an extraordinary teller of New York stories.