Nicolas Cage (“Vampire’s Kiss”, “Snake Eyes”) stars in “Bringing Out The Dead” from director Martin Scorsese (“Taxi Driver”, “Goodfellas”). The movie is dark and disturbing psychological drama and it has a dreamlike quality like “Taxi Driver” and “Eyes Wide Shut”. It is far from being a classic but it achieves a fair amount with some solid performances.

Frank Pierce (Cage) is a burned-out ambulance paramedic on the graveyard shift in Manhattan, who is haunted by the patients he failed to save. He struggles to maintain his sanity over three turbulent nights while also trying to befriend a young woman (Patricia Arquette “True Romance”), whose father has suffered from a cardiac arrest.

Nicolas Cage is terrific as Frank Pierce; you can really tell this is a tired and tormented soul. Each night, Frank is joined by a different colleague you get to see him partnered with John Goodman (“Barton Fink”), Ving Rhames (“Pulp Fiction”) and Tom Sizemore (“Black Hawk Down”) and all of them are excellent. All of the men are very different yet Cage manages to have some real chemistry with all of them. Patricia Arquette is very good as Mary Burke. Some of the other characters became a little tedious.

“Bringing Out The Dead” is filmed rather well and the performances are what make a really good watch but the movie still has its faults. Some of the sequences where Pierce keeps seeing the face of a deceased teenage girl feel come across as overdone and arguably unnecessary because Cage’s performance already convinces us that this guy is traumatised. I also did not care all that much for the subplot involving a drug dealer as it just felt like a distraction. I recommend “Bringing Out The Dead” because it has some wonderful performances and it will likely grip you with its bleak subject matter.