Bringing Out the Dead

Nicolas Cage (Con Air, Face/Off, Snake Eyes and Leaving Las Vegas) teams up with Patricia Arquette (True Romance), Ving Rhames (Mission: Impossible), John Goodman (Coyote Ugly) and Tom Sizemore (The Relic) as well as Academy Award-nominated director Martin Scorsese (Gangs of New York, Taxi Driver) to bring Joe Connelly’s blackly comic novel to the screen.

Artistically this film is superb, utilising many optical camera tricks, and uses the power of vision to help portray paramedic Frank Pierce’s life. A darkly witty script filled with suspense, humour and drama powers the talented cast through the two hour duration, without slowing down for one single frame. Each shot is purposely filmed with inventive precision and intent. It demonstrates the use of imagery as a catalyst for the story, and shows how crafty a man and a camera can be.

This film doesn’t have a linear plot, but is rather a snapshot of the life of this burnt-out paramedic. The film opens with Pierce (Cage) and Larry (Goodman) arriving at the scene of a cardiac arrest, where Frank meets Mary (Arquette), the daughter of the heart attack victim. From here we see the life of this exhausted paramedic and his search for solace, but that only leads him further down the track towards madness, as well as a cast of colourful and individual characters holding a portrait of the dark alleys of society.

This disturbing video is presented in its original theatrical aspect of 2.35:1, and is 16:9 enhanced. This transfer looks stunning, not for the usual culprits of defined edges and exquisite sharpness, but rather due to their absence. Scorsese, along with the director of photography Robert Richardson and editor Thelma Schoonmaker, have employed a variety of optical tricks of light using lenses, filters and the like in order to create such a removed vision of reality for the film. The dispersion of light and overexposure of elements are easy to portray using optical projection, but on a digital MPEG file a high enough bitrate must be achieved in order to correctly display these artefacts without posterisation and pixelation. And thankfully, this transfer gives these elements justice with a supreme transfer free of compression related artefacts. Blacks are solid, outstanding and rich, providing a dark atmosphere to the screamingly exposed image already on screen, with no low-level noise at all.

The slight downside to the transfer is the odd prominent film artefact slipping onto the artistically created framing. These are usually black, sometimes white, and vary in size. Now these aren’t terribly distracting but are quite apparent, partially due to the overexposed image. A well-placed layer change divides the two layers up cleanly at 58:35 and subtitles in seven languages, one of them English, provide clear and accurate subtitles.

The prime listening option of the four included audio tracks is the English Dolby Digital 5.1 powerhouse. Primarily this is a front-driven soundtrack, with solid leadership in the centre channel. The front left and right channels provide ambient and directional effects, as well as carry the bulk of the early ’90s pop-song score. Surrounds and the woofer rip through the soundstage with the odd event of subtlety yet still hold a powerful punch, but sadly only on the odd occasion.

Oscar-winning composer Elmer Bernstein’s score provides a rich ambience and emotional mood to the film, and is a great example of why he has won one Oscar, and been nominated for ten others.

A 10:49 production featurette is the extent of the extra features, and provides a glimmer of an insight into the ideas behind the film. This is the type of film that deserves a stock of quality features, such as a commentary, but sadly, even on this re-release, all we get is a brief featurette. You can’t win ‘em all.

This is no Taxi Driver, but it does stand out as a comical black tale of a burnt out paramedic. The video truly captures the precise nature of optical effects without compression-related artefacts, and the audio provides a subtle ambience to accompany the vision on screen. Sadly this DVD re-release still lacks extra features, but hey, it leaves all interpretations up to the audience. Grab this one for a night’s entertainment, it’s perfect for lovers of film as an art form.