Word: filming
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...