Bringing Out the Dead

After a disheartening and haunting career wears him down, New York City paramedic Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage) begins to collapse under the strain of saving lives and witnessing deaths in this overlooked 1999 Martin Scorsese film. Through the course of a few nights, three co-workers (John Goodman, Ving Rhames, Tom Sizemore) accompany Pierce as he grasps for sanity and pushes to be fired. Before Pierce falls off the edge, he still has a hope when he forms a friendship with a victim's daughter (Patricia Arquette). The film screens as part of "Cage Uncaged: A Nicolas Cage Retrospective."