It's hard to believe this is a Scorsese picture; there's something missing here. Virtually nothing in it rings true. All the yelling, banging and hysterics come across as empty theatrics. It's the movie equivalent of a bum scrounging through garbage cans looking for something interesting, finding about what you'd expect to find in garbage cans but getting mad about it anyway. It's a messy, looseleaf experience, like pages of an old newspaper flitting along a deserted street after dark.
Nicolas Cage's conflicts; his insomnia, the memories of the homeless girl he couldn't save, his eagerness to be fired, his infatuation with Patricia Arquette; feel phony, stitched on. Cage gives another in a long line of over-ripe, half-digested, unfocused performances, although he isn't quite as outrageously amateurish as he was in "Snake Eyes". Can this be the same guy who showed so much genius in "Raising Arizona" or "Red Rock West"? He's completely lost his compass as an actor and he knows it. He's become a brand name; instead of Coke try Cage.
For me the movie became little more than a hard fought competition to see who could give the most irritating performance. (My vote goes to Cage's oily supervisor, the one who keeps promising to fire him; though Scorsese's self-serving voice-only cameo as a fast-talking Dispatcher comes in a close second.) Strangely, none of Cage's sidekicks - John Goodman, Ving Rhames, Tom Sizemore (generally excellent actors) leave much of an impression. Their extremes in behavior don't feel authentic, just hastily and superficially conceived.
Could this really have been a Scorsese film? I kept asking myself that question. What was with all those inappropriate pop songs (which stuck out like a sore thumb and added nothing) on the soundtrack? Where was the mesmerizing, magnetic pull of a "GoodFellas" or "Cape Fear"? Of course there were a lot of remarkably talented people who worked on this project but, reputations aside folks, they've come up way short in this instance. Forget camera tricks and editing gimmicks for a moment and remember it all comes back to story-telling. "B.O.T.D" fails to tell a good story. It never figures out what it's trying to say.
Nicolas Cage's conflicts; his insomnia, the memories of the homeless girl he couldn't save, his eagerness to be fired, his infatuation with Patricia Arquette; feel phony, stitched on. Cage gives another in a long line of over-ripe, half-digested, unfocused performances, although he isn't quite as outrageously amateurish as he was in "Snake Eyes". Can this be the same guy who showed so much genius in "Raising Arizona" or "Red Rock West"? He's completely lost his compass as an actor and he knows it. He's become a brand name; instead of Coke try Cage.
For me the movie became little more than a hard fought competition to see who could give the most irritating performance. (My vote goes to Cage's oily supervisor, the one who keeps promising to fire him; though Scorsese's self-serving voice-only cameo as a fast-talking Dispatcher comes in a close second.) Strangely, none of Cage's sidekicks - John Goodman, Ving Rhames, Tom Sizemore (generally excellent actors) leave much of an impression. Their extremes in behavior don't feel authentic, just hastily and superficially conceived.
Could this really have been a Scorsese film? I kept asking myself that question. What was with all those inappropriate pop songs (which stuck out like a sore thumb and added nothing) on the soundtrack? Where was the mesmerizing, magnetic pull of a "GoodFellas" or "Cape Fear"? Of course there were a lot of remarkably talented people who worked on this project but, reputations aside folks, they've come up way short in this instance. Forget camera tricks and editing gimmicks for a moment and remember it all comes back to story-telling. "B.O.T.D" fails to tell a good story. It never figures out what it's trying to say.