Bringing Out The Dead reunites Scorsese with screenwriter Paul Schrader, in a mirror reflection of their breakout NYC nightmare hit Taxi Driver. Insomniac paramedic Frank (Nicolas Cage) is struggling to get through back-to-back shifts, fighting burnout and the nagging sense that he may be cursed. Over three chaotic nights in Hell's Kitchen, he and his unpredictable shift partners deal with births, deaths, overdoses and malingerers while haunted by visions of those he failed to save. After resuscitating a cardiac arrest patient Frank forms a friendship with the man's distraught daughter Mary (Patricia Arquette), a pair of lost souls trying to resist the urge to spiral into self destructive habits as the city does its best to drag them back down.

Adapted from the bestselling autobiography of NYC paramedic Joe Connelly, Bringing Out the Dead is a white-knuckle ride through the highs and lows of saving lives anchored by one of the all-time great Cage performances. Less a love letter to New York than an angry scrawl on a subway wall, it's a city shot by Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson as a kind of luminous ghost world populated with the almost-dead. Under-appreciated on release, this is a beautiful synthesis between Scorsese and Schrader's twin obsessions with the violence of the corporeal world and that of the spiritual.