Bringing Out The Dead

Maybe the streets of New York City just aren't that mean anymore, or maybe in the two decades since Taxi Driver Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader have lost their sense of urgency. Whatever the reason -- and the semi-autobiographical, episodic, faux magical-realist Joe Connelly novel on which Bringing Out the Dead is based may be the biggest one -- this new film from the great director and his screenwriting collaborator lurches around as ineffectually as its burnt-out hero.

Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage, out of his depth since Leaving Lost Vegas) is an EMT who's been working the late shift in Hell's Kitchen for too long. He's drinking too much and he hasn't saved anyone for months, until one night he punches life back into the chest of Mr. Burke, a hard-living 60ish working stiff who ends up on life support. Burke's voice, and the faces of those he couldn't save, haunt Frank as he scours the city with a variety of partners (John Goodman, Ving Rhames, Tom Sizemore), but Scorsese's rendition is a listless mix of ER and Lars von Trier's The Kingdom, seldom reaching in its more hallucinatory passages the skewed surreality of his underrated After Hours.

Cage's Frank is no Travis Bickle, though there is an underage girl of the street named Rose whom he once failed to rescue and whose accusing specter lurks on every corner. Even less convincing is Frank's relationship with Mary (Patricia Arquette), Burke's recovering-addict daughter; Cage seems to play down with her and play up with the guys, and neither extreme rings true. A series of uninspired set pieces backed by Cage's droning voice-over narration, Dead careers aimlessly like Frank's ambulance; the lights are on but nobody's home.

-- Peter Keough