After five years, this movie still haunts me. I've just added my review to my film database. I'm including the first few paragraphs below for your enjoyment. I hope you take some time to read the whole thing.
Frank (Nicolas Cage) is a paramedic for Our Lady of Misery Hospital in Hell's Kitchen, New York City. He works the late shift, the hours between eleven and seven in the morning. His inner-city route is challenging, encompassing the ghetto and low-income districts, which has its lion-share of drunks, loonies, street dwellers, whores, drag queens, and drug dens. But he wouldn't work anywhere else. This is the place he knows. This is the neighborhood he grew up in. And this is the place where he administers to the bodies and spirits of those in need. "These spirits were part of the job. It was impossible to pass a building that didn't hold a ghost. Eyes of a corpse; the screams of a loved one."
Frank used to love his job, serving the poor and needy and saving lives. "Saving someones life," he said, "is like falling in love. The best drug in the world. For days, sometimes weeks afterwords, you walk the street making infinite whatever you see. For a few weeks, I couldn't feel the earth. Everything I touched became lighter. Horns played from my shoes. Petals fell from my pockets. You wonder if you've become immortal, as if you've saved your own life as well. God has passed for you. And for a moment, God was you."
But something has changed for him and he has been unable to save anyone for six months. Because of this, he hasn't been able to sleep or eat. He's seeing the ghosts of those he has not been able to save. He has lost hope in his ability (or power) to save, though he commits at each new call that this patient will survive.
This is Frank's perspective when we meet him, when he gets the call to an apartment to revive a man who has suffered a cardiac arrest. Getting into the apartment, he finds the family hysterical, pleading him to bring their dad back to life. So he starts working on him, Mr. Burke. But Frank is troubled by the situation. Does he save him for the family? Does he save him to crawl out of his six-month slump? What about Mr. Burke. Does he even want to come back?
While jump-starting the heart, Frank said: "In the past, I came to believe in spirits leaving the body and not wanting to be put back, spirits angry at the awkward places death had left them. I understood how crazy it was to think this way. But I was convinced that I could turn around and see old man Burke standing, watching, waiting for us to finish."
In the next three days after reviving Mr. Burke, Frank mulls over these questions while dealing with his sense of hoplessness, guilt, and the ghost of Rosie, a young woman who died in his arms six months ago. Her face has begun appearing on every woman he'd see. Her voice would be the voice he'd hear. "I used to block it out." he said. "I used to forget. But she wouldn't let go. And now she's come to bear witness for all of them, for all who had been lost."
Read the review in its entirety here.
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