Once called "Father Frank" for his efforts to rescue lives, Frank Pierce sees the ghosts of those he failed to save around every turn. He has tried everything he can to get fired, calling in sick, delaying taking calls where he might have to face one more victim he couldn't help, yet cannot quit the job on his own.
Its hard-to-pin-down tone is frighteningly original -- simultaneously world-weary and adolescent with an aura of perpetual anxiety, as if the characters and filmmakers were in pursuit of a catharsis everyone knows will never come.
– Lisa Alspector,
Chicago Reader,
17 Sep 2008
rotten:
Of course, it's immaculately crafted and exhilaratingly paced, but in the end it's never as emotionally involving as it could and should be.
– Geoff Andrew,
Time Out,
24 Jun 2006
rotten:
Scorsese doesn't trust the power of simplicity to rock us.
– Peter Rainer,
New York Magazine/Vulture,
7 Aug 2004
fresh:
Scorsese has delivered a film that's both savage and sorrowing.
– Eleanor Ringel Gillespie,
Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
1 Jan 2000
fresh:
If you enjoy redemptions drenched in rhapsodic agony, religious mysticism and the bloody ick of emergency room chaos, that journey will be bliss for you.