Nic Cage Stole the Show in Martin Scorsese’s Forgotten 74% RT Psychological Thriller

Ben Morganti is a film and television critic at CBR, where he brings a filmmaker’s eye and a deep understanding of cinematic craft to his analysis.

With experience producing independent features and short films, Ben combines practical industry knowledge with a passion for storytelling across genres—including crime, science fiction, horror, and the works of directors such as Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese.

With a prolific career like the one Martin Scorsese has, it’s hard to pinpoint all the films that may or may not have an impact on audiences.

Even Scorsese has made some underrated gems that specific fan bases like or love.

Throughout his career, it feels like only the ’70s and the 21st century feature hit after hit from the great director.

In the ’80s and ’90s, Scorsese did a lot of experimenting, self-discovery, and overall evolving as a filmmaker.

This means that a lot of underrated gems, sleeper hits, and cult classics were actually made by Scorsese.

The ’90s featured a good number of these, and during an era when a lot of studios were once again taking risks on personal projects and genre films.

One film in particular is easily one that many fans forget about, and it came at the very end of the 1990s.

The most interesting thing about this ’90s gem is that it featured an underrated performance from Nicolas Cage.

1999 gave Scorsese fans Bringing Out the Dead, which is one of the few thrillers he’s done outside Cape Fear and Shutter Island.

Nicolas Cage is still probably one of the most underrated actors, even though he has made essential genre films throughout his career and has worked with some of the best directors.

Bringing Out the Dead might be one of Scorsese’s most obscure films, and it features a lot of intense sequences, abstract imagery, and resonant themes.

It all comes to life with a fantastic Nicolas Cage performance.

Bringing Out the Dead Is Martin Scorsese’s Most Obscure Film

Certain directors are known for being incredibly identifiable through their work.

While Scorsese is one of these directors, he’s not as visually unique as some filmmakers.

Fans don’t usually think of Scorsese as being a particularly abstract artist, because he’s definitely more of a storyteller.

However, with a film like Bringing Out the Dead, Scorsese leaned into all the ways he could emphasize imagery to get the most out of the concept.

Based on the novel of the same name, Bringing Out the Dead takes an in-depth look at what it’s like to be a paramedic in New York City, more specifically on the night shift.

Nicolas Cage plays Frank Pierce, who begins to find it harder and harder to do his job, as the weight of losing patients, combined with insomnia, begins to disrupt his mental state.

What’s beautiful about the story itself is that there seems to be one saving grace for Frank when one of the people he saves might pull through, and the gratefulness of the family begins to have a positive effect on him.

Scorsese cast Patricia Arquette in the role of Mary Burke, the daughter of the man Frank Pierce saved.

Arquette’s dynamic with Cage is the heart at the center of a twisted and chaotic psychological thriller.

Bringing Out the Dead balances the two sides of the paramedic coin, but Frank’s demons may consume him first.

A lot of the pace, tone, and imagery come from the experiences that Frank Pierce is having night to night while on shift.

Frank loses many, saves a few, and remains detached from a passionate desire to keep doing it all.

On top of that, he fails to find any kind of internal peace with his job, and it begins to affect his sleep.

The fact that he lives by night is also not helping his situation.

There are a lot of abstract themes and images that Scorsese intentionally infuses into the film to emphasize Frank’s mental state.

This manages to be one of the more interesting parts about the film, because it can be mesmerizing and terrifying watching Frank go through this darkly disturbed chapter of his life.

Since fans don’t expect Scorsese to play with elements of surrealism in such a grounded film, it gives Bringing Out the Dead elements of horror and the fantastical, which Scorsese mostly maintains throughout the film.

When things feel off, it is because it’s as if Scorsese himself has lost track of what exactly the film is supposed to be.

While structurally it functions well, and the character arc is interesting, there is a very specific genre convergence at play, and a tonal balance that doesn’t always hold up.

Bringing Out the Dead is definitely like nothing else Scorsese has done before, which makes it an interesting cinematic experience for the audience.

Nicolas Cage Gives One of His Best Performances In Bringing Out the Dead

Scorsese has always known when a story is more about plot or more about character.

When it is more about character, he allows the story to flow through the performances of the actors, which he merely guides in order to keep the character’s arc entirely on track.

While Bringing Out the Dead isn’t exactly a knockout film, it is still an interesting thriller with a primary focus on exploring the main character’s psychological state.

Psycho-analytical films are not new to Scorsese, who has made films such as Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, which each explore a character’s mental state.

When Scorsese makes these kinds of films, he takes on a very subjective approach to the characters, allowing the audience to be fully immersed in how the protagonist is thinking and feeling.

Bringing Out the Dead is another example of that kind of experiment as Frank Pierce slides deeper and deeper into his own anxiety, depression, and disillusionment.

Allowing the mentality of the protagonist to drive the entire story, Scorsese gives Nicolas Cage a chance to power the entire film with his performance, and this actually ends up being the highlight of the entire movie.

While there are some dips in the plot, the character development and character exploration that takes place is truly the defining quality of Bringing Out the Dead.

Fans don’t usually think of Nic Cage’s performances and think of Bringing Out the Dead first.

There’s a good reason for that, considering that he brings some of the most eccentric and electrifying characters to life in films like Raising Arizona, Wild at Heart, Leaving Las Vegas, and Face/Off.

It also doesn’t help that Cage had an incredible run in the ’90s that will likely always overshadow his performance in 1999’s Bringing Out the Dead.

Nonetheless, Cage captures the dwindling mental stability of a paramedic and the disrupted morality of a human being as Frank Pierce.

Furthermore, the film’s greater thematic purpose comes to life through Cage’s performance, which involves exploring the sacrifices that paramedics are forced to make and the trauma that comes with every person they lose.

Through this, there is a beautiful dichotomy, as there is so much that emotionally binds paramedics to their humanity, especially through just one person they are able to save, even if it is for every ten people they aren’t.

This comes across, even if Scorsese and Paul Schrader are more concerned at times with the dark dissection of the paramedic night shift and how it can detach people from reality.

Cage feeds off the concept, themes, and other performances perfectly, and ultimately elevates the entire film.

Cage is probably the reason Bringing Out the Dead is even more effective and absolutely an underrated gem of Scorsese’s career.

Scorsese Made Several Experimental Films In the 1990s

Bringing Out the Dead is just the final film in a long line of experimental genre films that Scorsese made throughout the 1990s.

For years before the decade, Scorsese was more concerned with building a career as a dramatic director, and he actually opposed making genre films.

Once he accepted the kinds of stories he could tell in different genres, he really started experimenting after doing Goodfellas.

Between gangster classics, historical explorations, and thriller gems, Scorsese made a lot of interesting films in the ’90s, which have actually aged so well over the years.

Looking back at this time in the acclaimed director’s career, Scorsese was embracing his role as a genre filmmaker, and it is definitely where fans will find some of his most underrated and unique films.

Aside from Goodfellas and Casino, his first true gangster epics, Scorsese did his first horror thriller with Cape Fear and made other genre sleepers like The Age of Innocence, Kundun, and arguably his best documentary, My Voyage to Italy.

Fans usually think of the same films from Scorsese’s ’90s run, but Bringing Out the Dead has to be the one that will be a delightful surprise for fans who discover it for the first time.