so whether Scorcese ripped off "Broken Vessels" for his waaaay below average "Bringing Out The Dead", or vice versa, either way the responsible party should have a good smack upside the head for putting together a bland, predictable, cliché-riddled mess that shouldn't have been committed to film ... what a waste of time on my part having to sit thru both of these hapless "dramas / thrillers" neither of which had very much of either in them ...
OK so we have paramedics who are under constant stress due to their jobs ... in "Broken Vessels" they deal with it (one guess here, folks, just read the title), yep! they deal with it by taking drugs ... even tho the fresh-faced, wide-eyed innocent Midwestern boy from Pennsylvania tries to refuse ... he really, really, really tries ... for about five minutes ... then he's doing heroin ... of course then we see the first part of a flashback to him driving down a pristine country lane while upending a can of beer ... and in the first ten minutes of the film he's asked ooohhhh about a dozen times why he's moved from Pennsylvania to Los Angeles ... 'just a change of scenery' is his answer in both his voice-over and acting part ... but we can figure out in about three seconds that anyone wanting a change of scenery while having flashbacks of drinking and driving and insisting really really hard that he doesn't even want a beer that back in good ol' Altoona he ran someone over while out drinking that beer he keeps having a flashback about ... and this of course is going to lead to having a beer and then immediately to heroin because, hey, as everyone knows, beer is the gateway drug to heroin ... you have one beer and then WHAMMO, you are on the BIG H, my friend ... not the little H but the big one ... not even the medium H but the BIG ONE, THE BIG H ... beer is sooooo evil that way ... even the Budweiser Clydesdales are all strung out on the BIG H just from hauling a big-ass wagon of fake beer kegs around to parades throughout America ... and you can imagine how big an H a Clydesdale needs to get his fix ... it's a BIG OL' H, pal o' mine ...
and we can all figure out pretty quick what's gonna happen to the character of sweet ol' "Gramps" ... he's a junkie who has been friends with the lead junkie on the paramedic team since he was 15 (the lead junkie paramedic btw has for some mysterious reason gone thru a lot of partners thru the years ... hhhhmmm, i still haven't figured out that one yet) ... he's not related apparently but just one of those nice ol' Gramps that all junkies have in their lives to keep them on the straight and narrow path of heroin use ... and when Gramps says something profound to the lesser of the junkie paramedic team ("When people talk about living, they're not talking about this" ... yep, that's the deepest line in the movie ... right there ... yep, about as deep as a Clydesdale's stall if it hasn't been cleaned for a few days), Gramps dies ... and the lesser junkie is now worried about how the morer junkie is going to fill the hole left by the Grampa junkie dying ... yep, i guess that's the first thing we all worry about when that happens ...
and so it goes and goes and goes ... really ... banging my head against the wall would have been a more productive way to spend the 90 minutes or so i spent watching this movie ... toss in Scorcese's hunk of celluloid crapola and that would be about three hours of head banging productivity ... if you haven't seen either of these film's yet, take my advice, choose banging your head against the wall ... you'll thank me later and stay away from the beer!!! it's the gateway, man, the GATEWAY!!!
OK so we have paramedics who are under constant stress due to their jobs ... in "Broken Vessels" they deal with it (one guess here, folks, just read the title), yep! they deal with it by taking drugs ... even tho the fresh-faced, wide-eyed innocent Midwestern boy from Pennsylvania tries to refuse ... he really, really, really tries ... for about five minutes ... then he's doing heroin ... of course then we see the first part of a flashback to him driving down a pristine country lane while upending a can of beer ... and in the first ten minutes of the film he's asked ooohhhh about a dozen times why he's moved from Pennsylvania to Los Angeles ... 'just a change of scenery' is his answer in both his voice-over and acting part ... but we can figure out in about three seconds that anyone wanting a change of scenery while having flashbacks of drinking and driving and insisting really really hard that he doesn't even want a beer that back in good ol' Altoona he ran someone over while out drinking that beer he keeps having a flashback about ... and this of course is going to lead to having a beer and then immediately to heroin because, hey, as everyone knows, beer is the gateway drug to heroin ... you have one beer and then WHAMMO, you are on the BIG H, my friend ... not the little H but the big one ... not even the medium H but the BIG ONE, THE BIG H ... beer is sooooo evil that way ... even the Budweiser Clydesdales are all strung out on the BIG H just from hauling a big-ass wagon of fake beer kegs around to parades throughout America ... and you can imagine how big an H a Clydesdale needs to get his fix ... it's a BIG OL' H, pal o' mine ...
and we can all figure out pretty quick what's gonna happen to the character of sweet ol' "Gramps" ... he's a junkie who has been friends with the lead junkie on the paramedic team since he was 15 (the lead junkie paramedic btw has for some mysterious reason gone thru a lot of partners thru the years ... hhhhmmm, i still haven't figured out that one yet) ... he's not related apparently but just one of those nice ol' Gramps that all junkies have in their lives to keep them on the straight and narrow path of heroin use ... and when Gramps says something profound to the lesser of the junkie paramedic team ("When people talk about living, they're not talking about this" ... yep, that's the deepest line in the movie ... right there ... yep, about as deep as a Clydesdale's stall if it hasn't been cleaned for a few days), Gramps dies ... and the lesser junkie is now worried about how the morer junkie is going to fill the hole left by the Grampa junkie dying ... yep, i guess that's the first thing we all worry about when that happens ...
and so it goes and goes and goes ... really ... banging my head against the wall would have been a more productive way to spend the 90 minutes or so i spent watching this movie ... toss in Scorcese's hunk of celluloid crapola and that would be about three hours of head banging productivity ... if you haven't seen either of these film's yet, take my advice, choose banging your head against the wall ... you'll thank me later and stay away from the beer!!! it's the gateway, man, the GATEWAY!!!