If Nic Pizzolatto tried to remake and “improve” the Martin Scorsese film Bringing Out the Dead, it would probably look a lot like Asphalt City. Pizzolatto, the humorless creator of the True Detective TV series, has a knack for pushing dark subject matter into such grim territory – a suffocating approach without a possibility of escape or fear – that disengagement is the only appropriate response. That is what Asphalt City feels like: directed by Frenchman Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, it follows paramedics in New York City with dogged fascination, mostly as they bear witness to unspeakable horrors, or lose their minds. A challenging subject matter is nothing new in the movies, especially nowadays, and yet this film stubbornly never waivers from its single note of brutality. The repetition means it is easier to see the faults, including a racist undercurrent that seemingly no one in this project seems to see.
Sauvaire and his cinematographer David Ungaro prefer an over-the-shoulder approach, following paramedics as they wander into one unpredictable, intense situation after another. Mostly we follow Ollie Cross (Tye Sheridan), a new guy from Colorado who moved to New York for the experience and who studies for the MCAT in his spare time. In the first of many obvious metaphors, we see Cross’ idea of his vocation the first time he wears civilian clothes: he wanders the streets of Manhattan with a stylized orange jacket made to look like angel wings. Cross’ partner is Gene “Rut” Rutkovsky (Sean Penn), a seasoned veteran who approaches the job with weary cynicism and a rigid code he carefully nurses. Working from a novel by Shannon Burke, Sauvaire follows Cross and Rut on several calls, where they mostly bear witness to shootings, wounds, overdoses and everything in between. Most of time, their attempts to save their patients are not successful.
When they’re off the streets, their lives barely improve. Rut is a walking trainwreck, his daughter being his only source of joy, while Cross strikes up a relationship with a young woman (Raquel Nave) after a chance meeting at a nightclub. Mike Tyson – yes, Mike Tyson – plays the supervisor to Rut and Cross, and he is an aggressive bureaucrat who has little interest in their job performance or mental health. The cumulative effect is that the paramedics are on their own, a kind of isolation which creates the temptation for a false sense of power. One of Cross’ colleagues (Michael Pitt) even flat-out says it’s their duty to “play God” when the doors to the ambulance close. Judgment can be intoxicating, sure, yet it is little solace when Cross and Rut are verbally and physically abused by the men and women whose lives they are trying to save.
Asphalt City makes New York City look like the kind of urban hellscape that previously was only in the imagination of conservative pundits and politicians. Practically everyone Rut and Cross encounter is a person of color, and all of them are maladjusted or violent. When they are white, they are immigrants who behave with unrealistic hostility. In an indicative scene, they treat a badly beaten woman who cannot speak English, while her violent husband practically barks at them in the background. Later, there is a scene where Michael Pitt’s character encourages Cross to beat on a black boy – barely a teenager – as a kind of karmic revenge. The film is too single-minded and myopic to be a critique of racism within the FDNY, and instead prefers to “other” every group under the sun, just so the viewer can have a better sense of what it’s “really like” out there. Misguided from the get-go, Sauvaire develops a barbarous streak that it has no desire – or self-awareness – to acknowledge fully.
Penn and Sheridan approve of this approach, as they both served on producers on the film, and their performances are similarly straightforward. Penn dials back his inclination for overacting, a lone saving grace, while Sheridan’s arc from idealism to a psychotic break has the subtlety of a sledgehammer. It is never, not once, Rut and Cross’ fault that they berate foreigners or ignore the Hippocratic Oath, the core tenet of their occupation. All that grittiness comes to a head in the film’s climax, a protracted display of urban horror: they burst into a locked room to find a woman who just gave birth, passed out. There is a needle sticking of her arm, entrails everywhere, and the blood-soaked baby is not breathing (we learn she is HIV-positive). The partners must make quick decisions, and the rest of the film concerns how they make sense of them. But this is not a film about morality, or character. It is like watching Truth Social posts about New York come to life.
Before it was called Asphalt City, the film was called Black Flies, the same title as the source novel. It also had a premiere at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, which should be no indication of the film’s quality, and merely what can happen when a French director helms an artsy American production. The first reviews were scathing, and a new title did not give the film a burst of adrenaline the filmmakers were hoping. What saves Bringing Out the Dead, another film about paramedics in New York, is its inventive visual style and how its heroes are recognizable individuals. They have personalities, sometimes using humor to handle tough situation. Some of these paramedics also yearn to be saved. That kind of dogged hope eludes Asphalt City, which would rather wallow in a hyperviolent nightmare, then turn around and pretend its warped vision is somehow authentic. If the film was not so tiresome and exhausting, then its central lie might also cause offense.
Photo courtesy of Roadside Attractions / Vertical
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