BRINGING OUT THE DEAD
Thank God for country music

  I don't even like country music.  But it makes me feel good that baby boomers are finally listening to something other than 60's rock, which sucked, still sucks, and will continue to suck until the last boomer finally dies and we no longer have to spoon-feed it to them.  The cool thing about country is that it's self-ghettoizing - everybody knows that country music is poison to the ears of all but its fans, even if its fans are legion.  That's why you don't hear country music attached to things which are meant to appeal to a wide group of people.  It's like my beloved heavy metal that way.  I would've loved to have heard In Flames' "Jotun" attached to some of these movies, but c'mon, we've got demographics to worry about.  I understand that.  It'll totally put off anybody who doesn't already dig it.

But 60's rock, it is widely assumed, can be hacked by all, is beloved by all, after all, it's (sob) our roots, dammit!  If it weren't for Clapton, there wouldn't BE an In Flames!!!  Fuck, I hope Clapton dies, I do, I hope he goddamn dies.  I'll die happy if I never have to hear another note from him; oh, I appreciate and love the Beatles and Hendrix as far as the next guy, but that's as far as it goes; as far as I'm concerned, rock music may as well have been put on hold until Sabbath came along.  Christ, even if it was good (which it isn't), thirty fucking years of having it regurgitated ad infinitum by radio, TV and movies has surely left it with nothing more to offer.  How much can you prize something that's been shoved down your throat every day since you got your first radio?  This crap seems to hold a singular place in the musical consciousness of America (not to mention Calgary radio, which has one count-'em-one non-college radio station which isn't specifically boomer-oriented), and I can't wait until the day when the last baby boomer either kicks or converts to country music; then maybe I'll be able to turn on the radio and get something other than "Jumpin' Jack Flash".  But until that day, we'll never get away from it.

One such forum in which we won't get away from it is a little Martin Scorcese film entitled Bringing Out The Dead, which tries to blend the decades-long overexposure of 60's rock with the several-years-long overexposure of Nicholas Cage.  Cage plays a New York paramedic whose job appears to be getting to him; he thinks he's seeing the ghosts of the people he couldn't save, he looks more exhausted and worn out than any character in recent movie history (except maybe that "Sloth" guy in Seven), and Jesus, you know he needs a day off when he starts hitting on Patricia Arquette, yecch!  (I just heard those two are married in real life.  Yikes, they're gonna have some ugly kids.)

So we follow this guy around through three nights on the job, partnered with three other men, while he tries romancing the daughter (Arquette) of a (heart attack? stroke? seizure?) patient who keeps having to get zapped back from death about 17 times a night.  He starts to wonder if maybe her father really just wants to die ("He's a fighter" says another doctor, failing to recognize just what the guy was fighting for), while he goes around saving (or helping save) a variety of NYC weirdos.

Much-hyped as Scorcese's return to his roots, Bringing Out The Dead is certainly a return to New York City, although it seems to me that other than with Kundun (never saw, heard lotsa stuff about it though), locations aside, he never really left his roots far behind.  It kind of followed the same weird pre-release trail that Fight Club did.  At first, all we heard was how stark and brutal and harrowing it was going to be, and we heard that right up until the trailers came out.  Trailers which marketed the film as a comedy (in BOTD's case, with tinges of horror as well).  Then the film comes out, and I found both films to be way too silly to like half as much as their staunchest defenders did, though neither film is half-bad and you could certainly do worse now that it's in the cheap theaters.

Cage tries here to reach ludicrous depths of despair, smartly choosing to play it more or less one-nutty-note instead of vacillating awkwardly between laughter and tears, Robin Williams-style.  I've seen entirely too much of this guy in the past few years, but I wouldn't mind so much if more of his roles were comic; as a dramatic actor, he tends to either Shatner his way through a role (8mm) or put the audience to sleep (City Of Angels).

And Arquette - Jesus, who the fuck out there told Arquette she could act?  I dunno guys, but there's just no way to politely say that she couldn't act like she smelled bad if you ate six pounds of asparagus, washed it down with a gallon of gin and peed on her head.  I have a certain amount of respect for her for consistently picking fairly offbeat scripts, but does it matter when as an actress, she sucks this bad?  She's never been good, in anything, never ever ever ever.  I believed her cleavage in True Romance, but that's about it.

But the three paramedics we see on the three nights this movie spans are all quite good.  First is John Goodman, who I've liked in everything I ever saw him in (well, I never saw King Ralph), who's had almost enough of this job as our hero has, but is more smartly and sensibly working his way through it.  Next is Ving Rhames, looking uncannily like a bulkier Billy Dee Williams, unabashedly Christian, enjoying every last minute of his job like he was doing God's work.  Finally comes Tom Sizemore, putting all that weight back on that he appeared to have lost for Saving Private Ryan, playing basically the same nutjob he usually does.  Notice how when Saving Private Ryan came out, everybody pointed out how good Sizemore was, moreso than any other individual actor?  His performance was good, but not THAT good - I think he got the praise because people were relieved he wasn't running around jumping up and down on Germans' heads all the time. (also fun is Arthur J. Nascarella - I could've sworn it was Scorcese himself with trimmed eyebrows - as a weary paramedic captain who keeps promising to fire Cage, though we know he'll never do it) (Scorcese is here in voice, as the dispatcher)

The nights out with the other medics are all fairly involving (if E.R. were half as much fun as this, I'd still be watching it regularly), but as soon as Arquette pops up on screen, well, that's when I knew when to schedule my bathroom breaks.  I guess this movie would've been a bigger hit with me if it had tried harder to resolve the dramatic issues, instead of the frequently comical payoffs we're given.  I like to laugh as much as the next guy, and I found this movie very funny indeed, but what we're ultimately given here kind of gives me a similar impression that a lot of dramatic comedies do (worst example: Patch Adams): in trying to juggle drama and comedy, one ball is dropped.  Here, it's the drama (as it usually is), and when a scene tries to be all of one or the other (such as the humorless scenes with Arquette), it often doesn't work.

And then there's that fucking 60's rock.  Oh, there are a couple of songs from other decades which I was able to pick out, but they sucked too.  Haven't we all had enough of "Red Red Wine" by now?

Still, bitch as I may, I'm actually going to recommend this one to you, because even though it kind of bogs down in the second half, it's still the funniest movie I've seen in a while. Its potential is far less realized than it should've been from such capable hands.  But I found it more rewarding than not, and when I look at the screen and think "This is what E.R. should be", I realize that warts and all, I'm looking at something special.  Give it a look, with the understanding that drama and horror are best looked for elsewhere. 

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