Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10778 in DVD
• Brand: Touchstone
• Released on: 2006-06-15
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, French, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, Dutch, Finnish
• Dubbed in: Italian
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 116 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Reuniting the "dream team" of director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter (and esteemed director in his own right) Paul Schrader--the men who brought you Taxi Driver and Raging Bull--Bringing Out the Dead provoked outrageously high expectations on its theatrical release. But when this brown-paper parcel of a film was unwrapped by critics and film-goers, the collective Christmas-morning sigh of disappointment was all but audible. Sure, there's lots of blood but where are all the guns, the wise guys cracking wise, the filmic fireworks most people expect from a Scorsese movie? But shake the wrapping a bit and out rolls a tiny, perfect parable about New York City ambulance driver Frank (Nicolas Cage) who finds grace just when he seems to have hit rock bottom.

Deprived of sleep, wired on speed of kinds, haunted by visions of a homeless girl he couldn't save, like Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle, Frank roams the neon-spackled streets despairing at the decay around him. He's as war-torn by the ravages of the 1980s (the film is set in the early 1990s, before Mayor Giuliani got tough on crime) as Travis was by Vietnam's after effects. But Frank's problem is too much empathy, not alienation, and at least he's not as crazy as his co-drivers--one addicted to food (John Goodman), one to religion (Ving Rhames) and one to drugs and violence (Tom Sizemore)--each colleague more hilarious and frightening than the last. This is a story of a man who thought he could not take it anymore, one wracked by guilt and regret, who ends up being redeemed by--it's a movie cliché, and yet it just about works here--the love of a good woman (Patricia Arquette).

Bringing Out the Dead may lack the glamorous, adolescent angst of Taxi Driver and eschew the rigorous dissection of masculinity that distinguished Raging Bull but it has its own quieter virtues and just as much visual bravura. Watching it on the small screen gives you more time to absorb its moral subtleties, its spectacular time-lapse photography and, like all great Scorsese movies, its hysterical stretches of black humour (Rhames' character's attempt to raise a seemingly dead clubber is a particular highlight). It may not be one of the director's, or even the screenwriter's, best films, but it still towers above most of the dross churned out by Hollywood every year and remains indispensable viewing for anyone serious about cinema. --Leslie Felperin

Amazon.co.uk Review
Reuniting the "dream team" of director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter (and esteemed director in his own right) Paul Schrader--the men who brought you Taxi Driver and Raging Bull--Bringing Out the Dead provoked outrageously high expectations on its theatrical release. But when this brown-paper parcel of a film was unwrapped by critics and film-goers, the collective Christmas-morning sigh of disappointment was all but audible. Sure, there is a lot of blood but where are all the guns, the wise guys cracking wise, the filmic fireworks most people expect from a Scorsese movie? But shake the wrapping a bit and out rolls a tiny, perfect parable about New York City ambulance driver Frank (Nicolas Cage) who finds grace just when he seems to have hit rock bottom.

Deprived of sleep, wired on speed of kinds, haunted by visions of a homeless girl he couldn't save, like Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle, Frank roams the neon-spackled streets despairing at the decay around him. He's as war-torn by the ravages of the 1980s (the film is set in the early 1990s, before Mayor Giuliani got tough on crime) as Travis was by Vietnam's after effects. But Frank's problem is too much empathy, not alienation, and at least he is not as crazy as his co-drivers--one addicted to food (John Goodman), one to religion (Ving Rhames) and one to drugs and violence (Tom Sizemore)--each colleague more hilarious and frightening than the last. This is a story of a man who thought he could not take it anymore, one wracked by guilt and regret, who ends up being redeemed by--it's a movie cliché, and yet it just about works here--the love of a good woman (Patricia Arquette).

Bringing Out the Dead may lack the glamorous, adolescent angst of Taxi Driver and eschew the rigorous dissection of masculinity that distinguished Raging Bull but it has its own quieter virtues and just as much visual bravura. Watching it on the small screen gives you more time to absorb its moral subtleties, its spectacular time-lapse photography and, like all great Scorsese movies, its hysterical stretches of black humour (Rhames' character's attempt to raise a seemingly dead clubber is a particular highlight). It may not be one of the director's, or even the screenwriter's, best films, but it still towers above most of the dross churned out by Hollywood every year and remains indispensable viewing for anyone serious about cinema. --Leslie Felperin

Special Features
English
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround English
Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
Scene Access
Location Featurette
Danish\Dutch\English\Finnish\Icelandic\Norwegian\Swedish

Customer Reviews

"...God has passed through you."
The shadow of those more familiar modern classics (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) will always hang over this film, but I found the critical cold shoulder it received quite impossible to understand.

Bringing out the dead resonates with the speed and collapse of an amphetamine. The blue tinge, the grey faces and Cage's deadpan stupor all seem to suggest some quiet apocalypse, and that is what makes it so special. The silence, and the wonder. Through his mini-epiphanies we are given a fast-track into the mind of Cage's world-weary medic, and we share his pain, but more importantly we share the fleeting hits of glory that he feels.

Cage ponders, on saving a life, the change that it commands in him, for it feels as though 'God has passed through you.' And you too will believe for a moment that He has.

works of mercy in new york
At the metaphorical level, this is a film about the works of mercy. If you weren't brought up a catholic, you might not know them: there are seven corporal works of mercy: feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, harbour the harbourless, visit the sick, free the prisoners and bury the dead, and seven spritual works of mercy: instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful, admonish sinners, bear wrongs patiently, forgive offences willingly, comfort the afflicted and pray for the living and the dead.

If you remember all this, all scenes that at first seem a bit weird or contrived will now fall into place.

The main theme is explicitly mentioned by Ving Rhames when they revive I.B. Banging in the middle of the second act:
"First you come to love, then you go to Mercy" or in other words, you can not perform works of mercy as an automatism, because then they loose all meaning. Which is what's wrong with Nick Cage's character: his heart isn't in it anymore.

Another classic from Scorsese.
As a story, this film may not seem to have much happening, but, when you find out that Scorsese co - wrote with Paul Schrader(Taxi driver), it is practically given that this is going to be classic Scorsese at his best. And B.O.T.D does not disappoint. In an all-round excellent cast, Nicholas Cage shines as paramedic Frank Pierce. He is complemented perfectly by a brilliant supporting cast, incl. Ving Rhames and my favourite salsa star, Marc Anthony, whom impressed me greatly with his portrayal of psychotic patient, Noel. As with all of Scorsese's films the soundtrack is obviously very well thought- out, and is possibly one of the finest of the year. B.O.T.D brings back some the drug- fuelled scenes that we remember so well in Taxi Driver, reminding us that nobody films New York at night like Scorsese. Overall, a huge success, but we all knew that didn't we?