Bringing Out the Dead (1999) on Netflix
Frank Pierce, a Manhattan paramedic, has saved no patient in months and sees Rose's ghost, a homeless teenager he failed to revive. Over three nights he rides with Larry, Marcus and Tom.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb6.8/1082,033 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes72%
Trailer
Plot summary
Frank Pierce works the graveyard shift on a Manhattan ambulance team. Burned out and unable to sleep, he has not saved a patient in months, and he sees the ghost of Rose, a homeless teenager he failed to revive six months earlier. Calling in sick and stalling on calls have not gotten him fired, and he cannot bring himself to quit. One night he and his partner Larry are sent to the family of Mr. Burke, a man in cardiac arrest. There Frank befriends Burke's daughter Mary, a former drug addict who is angry at her father and now hopes he will live. Mary was a friend of Noel, an addict often brought into the hospital.
Cast
- Cynthia Romanas Rose
Show all 20 cast
- Cullen O. Johnsonas Mr. Burke (as Cullen Oliver Johnson)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Bringing Out the Dead holds an odd place in home-video history: it was the final film to be released on LaserDisc in the United States, closing out the format there.
- Scorsese told Ebert years later that Bringing Out the Dead had failed at the box office and been rejected by a lot of the critics, but said it came out of his own life: "I had 10 years of ambulances. My parents, in and out of hospitals. Calls in the middle of the night."
- The idea of approaching Nicolas Cage to play the main character came to Martin Scorsese after a conversation with fellow director Brian De Palma, who had worked with Cage on Snake Eyes.
- The film was a financial disappointment, taking in $16.7 million against a production budget of $32 million, which made it an outright box office bomb.
- Looking back more than two decades later, in 2022, Nicolas Cage singled out Bringing Out the Dead as one of the best movies he ever made.
