Face/Off / Snake Eyes / Bringing Out The Dead (Box Set) (DVD)

Advantages: Good performance from Cage, looks fantastic
Disadvantages: Visual flair gets priority over a decent plot or script

...Snake Eyes, on paper, sounds like a good film. Directed by Brian De Palma (Carrie, Mission Impossible), written by David Koepp (Spider-Man, Panic Room), and starring the heavyweight acting combination of Nicholas Cage (Face/Off) and Gary Sinise (Forrest Gump). How then, does it all go so wrong? Well mainly, because the plot isn't up to much. Cage plays a somewhat crooked cop, Rick Santoro, who is at a casino-held boxing match when a government official of some sort is assassinated. Oh and there's a completely pointless hurricane going on outside. Looking at this event from multiple perspectives and speaking to witnesses who were there (obviously), he tries to piece together what is going on. However, he soon discovers that a betting scam, a mysterious blonde and an old friend of his may have something to do with a government... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: Scorsese directs
Disadvantages: The little bit of a plot there is fails to move forward from its miserable origins

...Martin Scorsese's BRINGING OUT THE DEAD was released in 1999 to the lurking pimp-scurrying possibility of being the sequel to his magnum opus TAXI DRIVER; but how much of this is true, how much does the film live up to its grand expectations? New York City, it's dirty with prostitution, filthy with pimps, rotten to the core with guns, depraved with drugs, awash with alcohol, junkies and homeless lunatics, with violence and sleaze oozing out of every other steaming sewer, but it's business as usual for Frank, an emotionally and physically drained over-worked paramedic, as he works the graveyard shift traversing through the dark and dank city streets. With ever-changing partners and a brutal situation that never changes, one of people dying if not already dead and visions of patients he wasn't able to save, his ideal is to help just one... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages:
Disadvantages:

...Bringing Out The Dead" is the latest from one of the masters of the cinema, Martin Scorsese, and this movie shows him at the top of his form, never lacking energy, style and brilliance. I've admired some of his attempts to break away from his mean streets rep with good films like "Kundun," but the mean streets of New York is his place and never does he fail in "Bringing Out The Dead" to show them in their rage and dark truths. The screenplay by Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, The Last Temptation Of Christ) is brilliant and complex, with great characters and situations. He gives just enough time to each character and non is wasted. Tom Sizemore is especially good as a blood thirsty paramedic. But the best performance here is by the lead, Nicolas Cage, who lets us feel his character's sadness and need for rest, for peace. Schrader's screenplay... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful