Bringing Out The Dead
| Bringing Out the Dead | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Martin Scorsese |
| Produced by | |
| Screenplay by | Paul Schrader |
| Based on |
Bringing Out the Dead by Joe Connelly |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Elmer Bernstein |
| Cinematography | Robert Richardson |
| Edited by | Thelma Schoonmaker |
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Release date
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Running time
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121 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $32 million |
| Box office | $16.8 million |
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.
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.
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