Bringing Out The Dead follows Frank Pierce, a paramedic in New York's Hell's Kitchen who hasn't saved anyone in several months and has become haunted by ghosts of those he lost, for three of the busiest days of the year. The cinematography is absolutely breathtaking. There is one extremely surreal sequence in wintertime, with snow falling upwards, that is almost too powerful. The visual imagery throughout was awe-inspiring. The editing was brilliant as well. The intro credit sequence was the best part about the movie, although it set my expectations impossibly high for the rest of the piece to follow. The music throughout was exceptional at setting and maintaining mood. Without the music, the movie would be a completely different experience--a much worse experience.
The exotic cast of characters, while played extremely well by more than capable actors, felt a bit too exaggerated for my tastes. (Also, every time I saw Marc Anthony on screen, I thought of Johnny Depp.) It seemed as if Scorsese didn't know whether the film should speak to us on a dramatic level or a surrealist level, so he did both. The result is an uneven movie that doesn't quite satisfy. On another note, I wasn't too keen on the depiction of the paramedics and people in the health profession overall--they all just seemed insane. And I felt a lot of the dialogue and voice-over narration was stale, uninspired, and just plain boring. Also, the stock plot conflict and resolution was predictable and painfully simple/bad. Whatever. It's a Scorsese picture, so you gotta see it. And for the quality of the cinematography, editing, and music you've come to expect in his pictures, you won't be disappointed.IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0163988/