IMDb > Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
Bringing Out the Dead
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Bringing Out the Dead (1999) More at IMDbPro »

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Overview

User Rating:
6.7/10   28,951 votes
MOVIEmeter: ?
Up 13% in popularity this week. See why on IMDbPro.
Director:
Martin Scorsese
Writers (WGA):
Joe Connelly (novel)
Paul Schrader (screenplay)
Contact:
View company contact information for Bringing Out the Dead on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
22 October 1999 (USA) more
Genre:
Drama | Thriller more
Plot:
An Easter story. Frank is a Manhattan medic, working graveyard in a two-man ambulance team. He's burned out... more | add synopsis
Plot Keywords:
more
Awards:
2 wins & 4 nominations more
NewsDesk:
(10 articles)
Third Trailer for Scorsese's Delayed 'Shutter Island'
 (From Get The Big Picture. 28 October 2009, 1:51 PM, PDT)

1999: A Year In Review (Part One)
 (From Screen Rant. 7 October 2009, 9:07 AM, PDT)

User Comments:
A brilliant film more (363 total)

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

Nicolas Cage ... Frank Pierce

Patricia Arquette ... Mary Burke

John Goodman ... Larry

Ving Rhames ... Marcus

Tom Sizemore ... Tom Wolls

Marc Anthony ... Noel
Mary Beth Hurt ... Nurse Constance

Cliff Curtis ... Cy Coates

Nestor Serrano ... Dr. Hazmat
Aida Turturro ... Nurse Crupp
Sonja Sohn ... Kanita
Cynthia Roman ... Rose
Afemo Omilami ... Griss
Cullen O. Johnson ... Mr. Burke (as Cullen Oliver Johnson)

Arthur J. Nascarella ... Captain Barney (as Arthur Nascarella)
more
Create a character page for: ?

Additional Details

MPAA:
Rated R for gritty violent content, drug use and language.
Runtime:
121 min
Country:
USA
Language:
English
Color:
Color
Aspect Ratio:
2.35 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
DTS | Dolby Digital | SDDS
Certification:
Iceland:16 | Portugal:M/16 | Malaysia:18SG (uncut version) | Malaysia:U (cut version) | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Canada:14 (Nova Scotia) | Canada:14A (Alberta/British Columbia) | Canada:PA (Manitoba) | Canada:R (Ontario) | Philippines:R-18 | Brazil:18 | New Zealand:R16 | Argentina:16 | Australia:R | Chile:18 | Finland:K-15 | France:-12 | Germany:16 (bw) | Hong Kong:IIB | Singapore:M18 (re-rating) | South Korea:18 | Spain:13 | Sweden:15 | Switzerland:16 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:16 (canton of Vaud) | UK:18 | USA:R (certificate #36706)
Company:
De Fina-Cappa more

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
This is the last movie to have been released on LaserDisc in the United States. more
Goofs:
Continuity: Just before Wolls crashes the ambulance, Frank starts to drink from a bottle of rubbing alcohol as he sits in the right front seat. The shot immediately shifts to one through the right side passenger window. The bottle is gone, and Frank is just staring forward. more
Quotes:
Griss: Don't make me take off my sunglasses! more
Movie Connections:
References Manhattan (1979) more
Soundtrack:
Le Sacre du Pintemps/The Rite of Spring more

FAQ

Is this movie based on a book ?
more
49 out of 61 people found the following comment useful.
A brilliant film, 13 November 1999
9/10
Author: Jamie Roberts (jroberts@passport.ca) from Toronto, Canada

Bringing out the Dead, unfortunately, has fewer fans than it deserves. Why? Because this isn't simply a "New York" movie, or a movie about a paramedic, or about euthenasia, despite the ostensible setting and plot points.

Instead, Scorsese has created a cinematic myth about how haunted modern existence can be, and what it takes to be "saved" and find grace in a seemingly godless world. His vision of New York is all literate existential comedy, not a window into the rotten Big Apple. Mere satiric commentary on the tragedy of life in New York is for journeyman directors; Scorsese is doing something else entirely here.

In other words, this is that really rare beast--a literate film that is, first and foremost, still a great movie. In the plot and its implications, there's more here of Flannery O Conner or Virginia Woolf than there is here of, say, Tom Wolf. More pariticularly, Bringing out the Dead does with masterful filmmaking what Joyce's The Dead did in prose. This film is a truly eye-opening investigation into how the living exist in the shadow of the dead and dying.

The film accomplishes this incredibly difficult task on many levels--the cinematography alone should give you a clue that this is definitely not Taxi Driver or Goodfellas--there's something more sublime here (the beauty that American Beauty explains wonderfully is shown everywhere in this film, but Bringing out the Dead is less mundane, simple and "character" oriented). Every shot is right, and the numerous computer effects here--on display almost for their own sake in The Matrix--are here poetically put together by a master director.

So, just for it's approach to a subject that few movies or directors would even attempt, this film will be a classic. Oddly enough, one of the few movies it can be compared with is Hitchcock's Vertigo, which confronts the same issues in a different way. Scotty's (Jimmy Stewart) desire to "raise" the dead is as strong as Frank's, and audiences didn't much like Vertigo when it was released either.

The acting, the music, the incredible photography--they're all great, if you realize you are watching a literate, funny, well-plotted (as opposed to simply plotted) meditation on the ghosts that increasingly inhabit our technocratic dwellings.

Too good for a grade: see it on the biggest, best screen you can while you can. BTW--it's better the second time.

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