Bringing Out the Dead

(1999)

This film from Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader lurches around as ineffectually as its burnt-out hero. Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage) is an EMT who's been working the late shift in Hell's Kitchen for too long. Haunted by those he hasn't saved, he scours the city with a variety of partners (John Goodman, Ving Rhames, Tom Sizemore), but this series of uninspired set pieces backed by Cage's droning voice-over narration careers aimlessly like Frank's ambulance: the lights are on but nobody's home.