BRINGING OUT THE DEAD

A Mean Streets Carol
Guest Review by Mike Flores

Martin Scorsese films are anxiously awaited by fans and critics for good reason. Mr. Scorsese is one of America’s top two directors, the other being Francis Ford Coppola. I’m not going to argue about which one is number one, that’s for chat roomers to figure out. Well, everyone on earth is telling me how great Bringing Out the Dead is. Maybe it’s because I just saw the truly revolutionary film Fight Club, but I just didn’t buy this film.

This is an odd feeling, as everyone I talk to is talking about this film. Remember when Woody Allen started doing films that weren’t funny and critics and fans told us they were funny, just not laughing-out-loud funny? Well, I didn’t buy that either.

There is no question that Nicolas Cage does an incredible acting job as the ambulance driver, but he was always a great actor. He just decided somewhere along the way to become the new action star of the decade and just hasn’t had to do much acting. The story is actually a re-telling of Taxi Driver, only that film is dark and this film is, kind of anyway, light. It’s about the people who drive the ambulance, as DeNiro once did with his cab, coming upon strange scenes and people.

But Taxi Driver was revolutionary. This material is so much like going back to material Mr. Scorsese had already wonderfully covered that I still don’t know why he picked this subject matter. Music is always important to Scorsese films, but in this case we get late 1970’s punk bands. This may be revolutionary to people in their forties, but compare that to the Dust Brothers doing the opening credits of Fight Club and the punk stuff sounds dated and lame. You can now buy the Clash and the Sex Pistols through record clubs, for god’s sake. No future, indeed.

And I just didn’t care. There is no Jodie Foster-type role; I just didn’t care for anyone in the film. I loved the scenes of Cage confronting the dead he couldn’t save. For me, that made the film part of the ghostly psychotronic trend that has emerged this year. But this film isn’t a ghost film.

I did love the trailer for this film, though. All I can say is, wait for it to come out on video.

P-Factor - Blood, violence, ghosts, crazy people, crazy people driving, probably fine for people who really don’t want to be confronted by truly revolutionary film- making but prefer their revolutions to be tea parties.

Blood; violence; ghosts; crazy people; crazy people driving; p-fave Scorsese.

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