Ollie Cross (Tye Sheridan) is a rookie paramedic working the night shift for the FDNY while prepping to retake the MCAT. Partnered with jaded veteran paramedic Gene "Rut" Rutkovsky (Sean Penn), Ollie dives into the darkest scenarios the city has to offer providing care and saving lives as the pressure and stress builds.
Asphalt City comes to us from director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire (previously of A Prayer Before Dawn) and is written by Ryan King and Ben Mac Brown which is adapted from the book Black Flies by Shannon Burke. The screenplay for the film appeared on the black list of best unproduced screenplays back in 2018 and assembled a high profile cast when the project came together. Released in a mostly quiet manner following a mixed reception at Cannes (complete with a title change to Asphalt City from the original Black Flies), while I applaud the ambition of the film it's unrelenting ugliness makes for a hollow experience when it feels like it's in service of little else than vicarious misery.
I'll say this for the film in that it's well directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire whose take on the streetlevel view of New York is reminiscent of the more gritty films of the 70s like The Hospital or any of Paul Schrader's films. The film also assembles a solid cast with Tye Sheridan, Sean Penn, and Michael Pitt proven performers who fully commit to their roles but beneath the interchangeable scenes of ugliness and misery it's undeniable that there's little else the film is saying other than paramedics see the worst of humanity.
Asphalt City doesn't really have characters so much as it has barely defined constructs who are defined primarily by one trait alone which is hammered in with the subtly of a hammer into an anvil. There's nothing all that much to Ollie Cross other than being an in over his head rookie with greater aspirations and even his relationship with a woman named Clara (whose name is never spoken in movie) feels more tangential and like it could've been cut from the film with nothing of value lost. The same can be said for Sean Penn's take on Rut who's solely defined by being a burnt out veteran and that's pretty much where the characterization stops and starts. But while Sheridan and Penn are stuck in blank roles, Michael Pitt is wasted in a performance that calls on him to be such a transparently evil paramedic, in a character whose so over the top in his nastiness and cruelty it makes you wonder why he hasn't been fired. I have no problem with dark films and some of my favorite films have been dark character studies or thrillers of dialed up intensity, but with Asphalt City it feels like two hours of rubber necking at the worst sights the filmmakers have to offer and an overly uplifting ending played to ethereal music which culminated in a "dedication" to EMS workers made me want to vomit more than any of the gore and ugliness the movie had wallowed in up to that point.
I really did not like Asphalt City and any praise I can give to this movie is directed more towards the performances and technical rather than the hollow cynicism on display throughout the punishing two hour runtime. The movie doesn't say anything that wasn't said better in the Martin Scorsese/Paul Schrader film Brining out the Dead over 25 years ago and you can get more value out of your average first responder procedural on network television than you can from the dark abyss that is this film.
Asphalt City comes to us from director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire (previously of A Prayer Before Dawn) and is written by Ryan King and Ben Mac Brown which is adapted from the book Black Flies by Shannon Burke. The screenplay for the film appeared on the black list of best unproduced screenplays back in 2018 and assembled a high profile cast when the project came together. Released in a mostly quiet manner following a mixed reception at Cannes (complete with a title change to Asphalt City from the original Black Flies), while I applaud the ambition of the film it's unrelenting ugliness makes for a hollow experience when it feels like it's in service of little else than vicarious misery.
I'll say this for the film in that it's well directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire whose take on the streetlevel view of New York is reminiscent of the more gritty films of the 70s like The Hospital or any of Paul Schrader's films. The film also assembles a solid cast with Tye Sheridan, Sean Penn, and Michael Pitt proven performers who fully commit to their roles but beneath the interchangeable scenes of ugliness and misery it's undeniable that there's little else the film is saying other than paramedics see the worst of humanity.
Asphalt City doesn't really have characters so much as it has barely defined constructs who are defined primarily by one trait alone which is hammered in with the subtly of a hammer into an anvil. There's nothing all that much to Ollie Cross other than being an in over his head rookie with greater aspirations and even his relationship with a woman named Clara (whose name is never spoken in movie) feels more tangential and like it could've been cut from the film with nothing of value lost. The same can be said for Sean Penn's take on Rut who's solely defined by being a burnt out veteran and that's pretty much where the characterization stops and starts. But while Sheridan and Penn are stuck in blank roles, Michael Pitt is wasted in a performance that calls on him to be such a transparently evil paramedic, in a character whose so over the top in his nastiness and cruelty it makes you wonder why he hasn't been fired. I have no problem with dark films and some of my favorite films have been dark character studies or thrillers of dialed up intensity, but with Asphalt City it feels like two hours of rubber necking at the worst sights the filmmakers have to offer and an overly uplifting ending played to ethereal music which culminated in a "dedication" to EMS workers made me want to vomit more than any of the gore and ugliness the movie had wallowed in up to that point.
I really did not like Asphalt City and any praise I can give to this movie is directed more towards the performances and technical rather than the hollow cynicism on display throughout the punishing two hour runtime. The movie doesn't say anything that wasn't said better in the Martin Scorsese/Paul Schrader film Brining out the Dead over 25 years ago and you can get more value out of your average first responder procedural on network television than you can from the dark abyss that is this film.