Broken Vessels
USA 1999
Reviewed by Philip Kemp
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
The present. Tom Meyer, a young man from Pennsylvania, arrives in Los Angeles and starts work with LA City Rescue, an ambulance service run by Mr Chen. Chen teams him with a more experienced paramedic, Jimmy Warzniak. At first impressed by Jimmy's cool demeanour, Tom realises that his partner is doing drugs and stealing Valium for his elderly grandfather. Initially outraged, Tom gradually finds himself adopting Jimmy's skewed values. Finding a camcorder in the ambulance, he starts filming the more traumatic events that take place on their shifts. After he accidentally kills his flatmate's tropical fish, Tom moves in with Jimmy. There, he meets his junkie neighbour Susy.
Susy takes in a lodger, Elizabeth, who soon moves out but not before she and Tom have begun seeing each other. Increasingly hooked on heroin, Tom stands her up. When Jimmy steals from an elderly couple, Tom is disgusted and resolves to kick the habit, but following a crash caused by a drunk driver he goes back on drugs. Jimmy's grandfather dies; Jimmy starts peddling the dope made by Susy's friend Jed in her garden shed. Susy blows up the shed, killing Jed and herself. Tom tries to cheat one of their dealers, who pulls a gun; as Tom and Jimmy make a frantic getaway they crash the ambulance. Jimmy is killed. Tom, threatened with prosecution, gets off thanks to a tape he shot earlier revealing police brutality.
Review
It's Broken Vessels' misfortune to be following Scorsese's Bringing Out the Dead so closely into UK cinemas - not only because Scott Ziehl's low-budget indie was in fact shot first, but because the two films have rather less in common than their coincidence of plot and subject matter (ambulance drivers cracking up) might suggest. Where Scorsese and Paul Schrader's film is ultimately a quest for redemption, Ziehl gives us something far bleaker: a manic downward spiral into perdition. Tom Meyer arrives in LA haunted by a fatal event in his past that he hopes to expiate by taking on a paramedic job, saving lives to make up for those he took - only to find he can save nobody, not even himself. If there is a Scorsese parallel, it's more with the earlier GoodFellas, whose hero likewise emerges from a paroxysm of drug-fuelled hysteria to find himself left with nothing but a devalued freedom.
If this sounds off-puttingly grim, it's worth emphasising that Broken Vessels is powered by a contagious headlong energy and is often outrageously funny. Most of the best moments of black humour stem from Tom's anti-mentor Jimmy, a tour de force performance of deranged truculence from Todd Field (last seen as Tom Cruise's pianist friend in Eyes Wide Shut). At one point, transporting an obstreperous patient, Jimmy casually swings round, slams heart stimulators on each side of the guy's head and jolts him out cold. It's inevitable that the impressionable Tom should be drawn to the older man's amoral cool, ignoring the warning signs: early on Jimmy confides his ambition to become a cop because "they make their own rules". Tom's own morality is precarious: after Jimmy robs an old couple, Tom's brief attempt to kick both the drugs and his partner's influence stems as much from their brush with the law as from disgust at the theft.
Jimmy's self-justifying credo stems from a sense of his own devaluation, of being obliged to deal with the dregs of society while he's treated as little better. "We make the difference between life and death - and some guy flipping burgers earns more than you," he tells Tom. In ways that parallel the relationship between Brad Pitt's Tyler Durden and Edward Norton's narrator in Fight Club, Jimmy is Tom's dangerous, charismatic alter ego, saying and doing the things the younger man doesn't quite dare to. But as they sink deeper and faster into the morass of subcultural LA, their paths, and their characters, converge until at the end the dead Jimmy seems to have taken Tom over. Ziehl, directing, co-producing and co-scripting, powers this blackly comic drive to the abyss with reckless gusto, much aided by some richly off-the-wall performances (Susan Traylor's is a standout) and Antonio Calvache's frenetic camera movements and murky, subaqueous lighting. The occasional roughness of the production values does nothing to detract from the film's impact. In fact, it enhances the sense of a world careering out of control and leaking vital fluids at every orifice.
Credits
- Director
- Scott Ziehl
- Screenplay
- David Baer
- John McMahon
- Scott Ziehl
- Director of Photography/
- Camera Operator
- Antonio Calvache
- Editors
- David Moritz
- Chris Figler
- Production Designer
- Rodrigo Castillo
- Music
- Bill Laswell
- Martin Blasick
- Brent David Fraser
- ©Broken Vessels
- Production Companies
- Unapix and Zeitgeist Films present a Ziehl and Zal production
- Producers
- Roxana Zal
- Scott Ziehl
- Co-producers
- David Baer
- Robyn Knoll
- Todd Field
- Associate Producers
- Vidette Schine
- John Sjogren
- Production Co-ordinator
- Bonnie Foley
- Unit Production Manager
- Vidette Schine
- Location Manager
- Gil Herrick
- Assistant Directors
- Stacy Kalkowski
- Ron Lunceford
- Anthony Carregal
- Haley Collings
- Script Supervisor
- Becky Claasen
- Casting
- Robyn Knoll
- Digital Compositing Artists
- Jeffrey Castel de Oro
- Cesar Romero
- Tony Barraza
- Special Effects
- Matthew Reilly
- Art Director
- Kristen Gilmarten
- Illustrator
- Fred Stuhr
- Costume Designer
- Roseanne Fiedler
- Key Make-up
- Myles O'Reilly
- Titles/Opticals
- Title House
- Basses/Guitars/
- Keyboards/Sounds
- Bill Laswell
- Guitars/Programming
- Robert Musso
- Guitars
- Nicky Skopelitis
- Drums
- Lance Carter
- Contra Bass Performer
- Robert Oriol
- Music Producer/Arranger
- Bill Laswell
- Music Supervisor
- Tracy McKnight
- Engineer
- Robert Musso
- Soundtrack
- "Hands" by/performed by Bill Laswell, Lori Carson; "Lord", "Bring Down" by/performed by David Brent Fraser; "Grass Skirt Girl Ditty" by/performed by Todd Field
- Sound Design
- Clive Taylor
- Sound Co-ordinator
- Yael Shpiller
- Sound Mixer
- Vince Garcia
- Re-recording Mixer
- Clive Taylor
- Dialogue Editor
- Raymond Spiess
- Sound Effects Editors
- Lydian Tone
- Barry Key
- Christian Taylor
- ADR
- Mixer:
- Michael Hicks
- Foley
- Supervisor:
- Lydian Tone
- Artists:
- Michael Lyle
- Heather Douglas
- Paramedic Consultant
- Jeff Rogers
- Cop Consultant
- John Lutz
- Firearms
- Mike Tristano
- Animals Provided by
- Performing Animal Troupe
- Cast
- Todd Field
- Jimmy Warzniak
- Jason London
- Tom Meyer
- Roxana Zal
- Elizabeth Capalino
- Susan Traylor
- Susy
- James Hong
- Mr Chen
- Brent David Fraser
- Jed
- William Smith
- Bo
- David Baer
- Bob
- Stephanie Feury
- Jill
- Patrick Cranshaw
- Gramps
- David Neilson
- Rick
- Charley Spradling London
- Ginger
- Ashley Rhey
- Karen
- Rodrigo Castillo
- Oscar
- Al Israel
- Detective McMahon
- Bobby Harwell
- Detective Baer
- Shashawnee Hall
- crazy sword man/Ricky
- Rose Marie
- Mr Chen's secretary
- Rose Powell
- Earl's wife
- Rita Solomon
- waitress
- Herman Solomon
- gambler
- Robert Kropt
- Earl
- Justin Herwick
- Mike
- Gerald Lee
- Lance
- Vidette Schine
- lawyer
- John McMahon
- Scotty
- Ron Jeremy
- porn star - himself
- Marcia Gray
- porn star
- Christopher Gallivan
- Jenny White Buffalo Clay
- ravers
- Solo Scott
- Ron Lunceford
- Craig Alsop
- Lisa Warsniak
- Joey Gold
- crackhouse
- David Richardson
- Eric Lee
- Allen Deeker
- John Lutz
- Chris Coronado
- Tim Barker
- Michael Bondi
- Tucker Tooley
- Curt Skaggs
- Denny Holmes
- Gerald Dailey
- Art Acevebo
- Keith Zubulevich
- Thurn
- John Hughes
- Peter Kejmar
- Steve Jack
- cops
- Dolores Anderson
- mother of crazy man
- Lisa Davis
- hooker
- Eugene Pagano
- Alfred Pagano
- bartenders
- Kevin O'Connell
- fire captain
- Barbara Volz
- Joseph Ortiz
- firefighters
- Evelyn Jensen
- Jeff Rogers
- Eric Avery
- Randy Plaice
- Chris Jones
- medics
- Kevin Brown
- drug dealer
- George Gunderson
- Chester
- Ben Liou
- drowning victim
- Juan Morales
- best man
- Fernando Manzanilla
- groom
- Shawna L. Brown
- bride
- Frank Bustamante
- groomsman
- Valeria Hernandez
- bridesmaid
- Porfirio Cordova
- father
- Mary Sears
- Nancy Ziehl
- Marguerite Bonner
- Juan Velasques
- Frances Anthony
- Robert Aguilar Jr
- Alma Freeman
- Jimmy Galicia
- Eduardo Rodriguez
- Jose Bala
- Aurelio Barraza
- Lupe Medina
- Miguel Loza
- Fermin Bueno
- Luis Silva
- Mary Lopez
- Gilberto Labiada
- Maria Del Carmen
- onlookers
- Betty Leo
- Susan Robars
- Cathleen O'Shea
- Reta Leon
- Jnim Murrell
- old folks home
- Leon Fogel
- Silvia Pelajo
- Elan Benshimon
- Sharon Benshimon
- Carlos Augulo
- Karen Fogel
- Natalie Barajas
- wedding party
- Jim Czarneski
- Bob's friend
- Gelene Collings
- David Ziehl
- accident victims
- Jack Kerrigan
- drunk driver
- Ismael Cruz
- Jose Leon
- José Luna
- Bill Garcia
- Ismael D. Perez
- Warren Longsworth
- Lemmy Price
- gang members
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- Feature Film Company
- 8,234 feet
- 91 minutes 30 seconds
- Dolby
- Colour by
- DeLuxe