Not Quite Dead Yet : Trading ambulances for taxis and Cage for DeNiro, Scorsese returns to form.

In Bringing Out the Dead, Martin Scorsese resurrects a Manhattan savior of the streets in Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage), a burned-out medic who has lost faith in himself and is haunted by the ghost of a girl he couldn't save. He finally finds redemption with the help of Mary (Patricia Arquette), whose own suffering brings them together. Here, Scorcese revisits his Last Temptation of Christ with a bit of Taxi Driver thrown in. With enough Christian motifs packed into the film to revive Sunday school memories for any born-again atheist, this movie explores the world of the paramedics as they provide salvation-on-wheels to the wretches of New York City.

The volatile team of medics in Bringing Out the Dead is often more battered and disturbed than the patients spewed from the streets are. John Goodman as Larry enters with his overweight working man's charm and bravado, and the audience is fooled into thinking this will be the routine buddy-cop movie with jolly, fat guy exchanging caustic one-liners with his thinner, but emotionally more substantive, partner. However, as the wheels spin out, the film takes the audience along for a more complex, hellish ride that visits death, madness, and despair on every street corner. Ving Rhames as Marcus brightens the movie with a comic volubility that the heavy film so badly needs. He is a smooth talking paramedic who has a soft spot for gin and prostitutes and a talent for preaching. Then watch as he, cradling the receiver, slips his voice into something more comfortable and makes sweet love to the dispatcher (voiced by Queen Latifah). The other medic is ex-marine Vietnam vet Tom Walls (Tom Sizemore). He's a scary thing to unleash on the streets, a sort of manic vigilante with his own laws of humanity. It's a chilling performance, and Sizemore also shows off his talent at smashing things.

Marc Anthony (yes the salsa master) gives a jarring, sometimes awkward, but overall effective performance as Noel, an unstable street urchin who violently shakes out his lines with the aid of a dreadlocks wig last seen on Sideshow Bob of "Simpsons" fame. In fact, the whole slew of characters in this film seem to have been gleaned from the daytime talk shows, where the pathetic and pained get their airtime in America. There's even a scene showcasing that staple of the "Jenny Jones Show"--middle class white kids donned as gloriously wimpy goths. They get a makeover as well, but it's a spiritual one, which is even more amusing than seeing them in floral patterns.

Bringing Out the Dead owes a lot to New York City, its silent costar, but there's another central contender as well--the hospital dubbed Our Lady of Misery. There's a column of bullying power in the black police officer who, like Saint Peter, mans the entrance to the clinic, deciding who is admitted and who is not. But through the steely gates is not paradise, for this overcrowded, understaffed clinic has patients writhing and screaming within every cinematic inch. In this fluorescent-lighted madhouse, the sterile, linoleum-- tiled hospital reflects the emotional tone of the nurses and doctors who've simply seen too much to really care anymore.

Centered in this movie-world is Frank Pierce. Set in the early '90s, the film covers three nights in Manhattan in its heyday of urban despair. The whole world's an ambulance, it seems, and all the people in it merely victims. This movie pulls, emotionally as well as aesthetically. Sounds and colors of the sirens and streetlights are stretched out to a wail and a blur, and anguish tugs on every line of Cage's face. Many key scenes are cramped into the driver's seat and bloody siren lights stain the medics' faces. This gristly and sometimes hallucinatory style is not for every viewer's consumption. Sensory overload coupled with the constant despair theme can make the film itself seem too purgatorial to bear. But there's also plenty of gallows-humor tossed back and forth between the medics. The movie bristles with the kind of humor that makes the audience wonder how they could even laugh at something so horrific. But they have to laugh along with the medics if they want to survive the film.

Basic message: Everyone needs a little bit of love, and a whole lot of salvation. For Frank, however, salvation is something he can't find because everywhere he sees Rose, the ghost of a girl he couldn't save. Saving lives to replace the ones he has lost is not the redemption he seeks. Instead he needs absolution that will help him understand the limits of his role. And he finds this through Mary, the daughter of a heart attack victim. A reformed druggie, Mary hovers between the worlds of Frank's hell and that of the living, as they both try to find a meeting point. Cage and Arquette (married, but not as obnoxious an acting duo as Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman) bring such tenderness to this harsh film that watching them sometimes fools us into thinking this movie is simply a romance between two broken souls. Arquette owns this other-worldly presence that develops into a figure of refuge. There's a lot of white overhead lighting in this film that lends to a spiritual look, and the lighting that touches down on her head like a halo illuminates her martyr beauty as she sighs every line.

Sure the religious themes of loss and redemption may not be original, but Scorsese's creation bleeds Frank Pierce and the nighttime world of New York City with all its grotesque beauty and pain. This film needs no savior, but it still owes a lot of its moving power to its star, Nicolas Cage, who finally takes a break' from all of Joel Bruckheimer's testosterone flicks and returns to an actor's movie, one that can showcase his intensity and expressive range. Cage has found the perfect vehicle to display his talent as another less glorious, but equally moving, crucified creature bringing hope to others and finally himself.