Mustapha's Film Review
Created | Updated Jun 22, 2003
In line with my policy on brevity and simplicity, I am going to use a three star Replay rating system:
For me, the real test of a movie's quality is: would I willingly pay $10 to sit through this again? This is of course based on my presumption that seeing a movie on the bigscreen is vastly superior to seeing it on video.
* = I've already forgotten what movie I'm writing about.
** = Maybe when it comes out on video.
*** = The popcorn machine at the cinema is on emergency standby, waiting for my MacArthur-like return.
Bringing out the Dead
Dark humour. Alcholic, insomniac, sweat-soaked and blood-stained
humour that serves most adequately to highlight the drama. If I were to make comparisons, MASH1 would come to mind. Not merely the medical
themes, but the hellish setting and the characters' individual methods
of dealing with it.
BotD would be best described as an unpleasant hallucination, there's no real linear direction, but it has its own natural course to follow, a beginning and an end.The film is more disturbing dramatically than it is graphically IMHO (you would see as bad if not worse in ER or Chicago Hope), and if it weren't the truly high calibre of all concerned... actors, director, writer, etc., the film might have been unwatchable. But BotD doesn't just disturb, it touches, amazes and amuses. And it's easily Cage's best work since Leaving Las Vegas.
Replay Rating: ***
Frank Pierce, Hawkeye's full name is Benjamin FRANKlin PIERCE.
Coincidence?
