The Movie: Bringing Out The Dead has some pretty big names behind it. Directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Nicholas Cage, with folks like John Goodman, Tom Sizemore, Ving Rhames, and Patricia Arquette in supporting roles, screenplay by Paul Schrader, writer of Raging Bull and Taxi Driver. It's based on a novel by a real-life New York City EMT, and while its insight into the world of ambulance drivers is interesting, as a film, it proved less than effective.

Nicholas Cage stars as a burnt out EMT working a bad part of town who is being haunted by the ghosts of the people he wasn't able to save. Some people have drawn parallels between this film and Taxi Driver with their main characters being driven to the brink of insanity by horrible things they see going on in New York.

While the film is visually amazing, and some of the sequences proved to be entertaining, the film just didn't flow as a whole. This is a film that is actually less than the sum of its parts, and I guess that's why I hadn't even really heard of it until Netflix suggested that I might like it. Overall, I can't say I really enjoyed it.

The DVD: The anamorphic video on this disc impressed me with its flawless reproduction of images that are typically tricky for video compressionists to capture, particularly the constant strobe effects. The video was extremely clean, with very little dirt or dust and whatnot, while preserving the film grain which lent a gritty feel to the film. Contrast was good, as was the blackpoint, and colors where bright and bold in all the places they were supposed to be.

The audio was also very good, though it did not impress me in the way the video did. Special features were on the light side, with a couple of trailers and a clip of interviews with the cast and filmmakers. Overall, I'd say this is one of those rare occasions where the quality of the DVD production far surpassed the quality of the actual movie itself.