Why I love Nico­las Cage’s per­for­mance in Bring­ing Out the Dead

Released in 1999 to gen­er­al­ly pos­i­tive reviews but a poor box office, Bring­ing Out the Dead remains one of Mar­tin Scorsese’s most over­looked films. His fourth col­lab­o­ra­tion with screen­writer Paul Schrad­er (here adapt­ing a nov­el by Joe Con­nel­ly) acts as a fusion of the pair’s ear­li­er efforts Taxi Dri­ver and The Last Temp­ta­tion of Christ. It is a fre­quent­ly hor­rif­ic odyssey through noc­tur­nal New York, tinged with a des­per­ate grasp at grace from a man tee­ter­ing on the line between life and what­ev­er lies beyond.

Instead of Christ, though, Bring­ing Out the Dead’s hero is Frank Pierce, a grave­yard shift para­medic played by Nico­las Cage, an actor who prob­a­bly qual­i­fies as a deity to cer­tain sub­sets of online fan­dom. The film fol­lows Frank over three con­sec­u­tive nights, at a point where he’s not man­aged to save any dying patients for months. Dur­ing these hec­tic nights, he befriends the daugh­ter (Patri­cia Arquette) of a heart attack vic­tim he’s brought in and works in a two-man ambu­lance team with a slew of dif­fer­ent part­ners, each as unhinged as him but in their own ways.

The part­ners are played by John Good­man, Ving Rhames and Tom Size­more respec­tive­ly, with the lat­ter two giv­ing career-best per­for­mances. While the entire cast is excel­lent, Cage – as is so often the case – is the real star of the show. Sad­ly, and for what­ev­er rea­son, Bring­ing Out the Dead remains the sole joint offer­ing between Cage and Scors­ese, and the last between Scors­ese and Schrad­er (although Cage and Schrad­er did reunite on 2014’s Dying of the Light and 2016’s Dog Eat Dog).

Cage is the ide­al Scors­ese pro­tag­o­nist because he looks so thor­ough­ly chewed up and spat out – both by the urban hor­rors of his sur­round­ings and his per­son­al demons. And with the flash­es of mag­i­cal real­ism Scors­ese adds to the mix, those two forces become one at many points, as Frank is haunt­ed by man­i­fes­ta­tions of peo­ple he was unable to save, as well as the appar­ent abil­i­ty to hear the thoughts of patients as they float between life and death.

Like Taxi Dri­ver, Bring­ing Out the Dead is pep­pered with nar­ra­tion from its dam­aged pro­tag­o­nist, and it’s through this that Frank sum­maris­es his lot in life ear­ly on in the film. ​“Sav­ing someone’s life is like falling in love. The best drug in the world.”

Stuck in a per­pet­u­al bone-tired state, Frank seeks an escape from his lifestyle by a fir­ing that nev­er comes. Yet, despite all his protests and rage against his pro­fes­sion, patients and his afore­men­tioned demons (there’s one par­tic­u­lar young woman he failed to save who haunts him the most), there’s the per­vad­ing sense that he’s hope­less­ly addict­ed to this way of liv­ing. The work is depress­ing as hell, but he sim­ply can’t cope with­out the adren­a­lin rush that comes from sav­ing lives. It’s that high – or at least the chas­ing of it – that keeps him alive, the bit­ter irony being that this reg­i­men is slow­ly killing him at the same time.

Key to the film’s suc­cess is the way it veers from a brand of gal­lows humour into total hav­oc, often with­in the same scene. Accord­ing­ly, Cage is the per­fect anchor for a hyper-stylised, con­stant­ly gear-shift­ing tale. More recent­ly his idio­syn­crat­ic act­ing style has seen Cage spawn more memes than earn plau­dits, but this is tes­ta­ment to his will­ing­ness to go any­where for a role, no mat­ter how dis­rep­utable the project (and there has cer­tain­ly been plen­ty of those over the last decade or so). Yet it’s a rep­u­ta­tion he seems to have embraced, even going as far as to make a lengthy sur­prise appear­ance at a fes­ti­val ded­i­cat­ed to his own films.

Focus­ing on Cage’s var­i­ous phys­i­cal tics and max­i­mal­ist ten­den­cies sole­ly as a source of com­e­dy does a dis­ser­vice to the man’s tal­ent. Giv­en the right project, he can be a per­former of immense emo­tion­al avail­abil­i­ty, a qual­i­ty present from his very first lead role in the 1983 teen romance Val­ley Girl. The nature of Bring­ing Out the Dead’s off-kil­ter nar­ra­tive allows Cage to exag­ger­ate cer­tain aspects of his screen per­sona, but he also imbues Frank with a pal­pa­ble ten­der­ness, even when he’s rail­ing against the cycli­cal sit­u­a­tions he finds him­self in. The film sim­ply wouldn’t work with­out the earnest­ness Cage brings to the part. Frank, much like the film itself, invites us to see past his tough exte­ri­or at the more hope­ful qual­i­ties hid­den within.