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Poster for Bringing Out the Dead

Bringing Out the Dead

Any call can be murder, any stop can be suicide, any night can be the last.

1999 · 2h 1m · R Drama
Directed by Martin Scorsese

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Overview

Once called "Father Frank" for his efforts to rescue lives, Frank Pierce sees the ghosts of those he failed to save around every turn. He has tried everything he can to get fired, calling in sick, delaying taking calls where he might have to face one more victim he couldn't help, yet cannot quit the job on his own.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
74%
Tomatometer
Fresh

Its hard-to-pin-down tone is frighteningly original -- simultaneously world-weary and adolescent with an aura of perpetual anxiety, as if the characters and filmmakers were in pursuit of a catharsis everyone knows will never come.

Lisa Alspector, Chicago Reader
Rotten

Of course, it's immaculately crafted and exhilaratingly paced, but in the end it's never as emotionally involving as it could and should be.

Geoff Andrew, Time Out
Rotten

Scorsese doesn't trust the power of simplicity to rock us.

Peter Rainer, New York Magazine/Vulture
Fresh

Scorsese has delivered a film that's both savage and sorrowing.

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fresh

If you enjoy redemptions drenched in rhapsodic agony, religious mysticism and the bloody ick of emergency room chaos, that journey will be bliss for you.

Desson Thomson, Washington Post

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