Editor's note: It has been brought to the attention of The Flat Hat that Ben Domenech, a writer for The Flat Hat from 1999 to 2000, may have copied from and failed to cite sources in several articles. The Flat Hat is currently investigating these allegations.

If you have any information about other articles that contain copied material, please e-mail the editor at flthat@wm.edu.

Correction: A previous version of this note stated that Domenech was a writer for The Flat Hat from 1999 to 2001. In fact, it appears his last contribution was a letter to the editor on Dec. 8, 2000.

By Ben Domenech

Flat Hat Staff Writer

COURTESY PHOTO, Paramount Pictures

John Goodman co-stars in "Bringing Out The Dead."

Martin Scorsese is a godfather of the American cinema. The creator of such modern, violent classics as "Raging Bull" and "Goodfellas," Scorsese tops the list of deserving individuals that have never won an Oscar for their direction.

Despite this status, Scorsese remains an influential and amazingly skilled director, and he proves this yet again with his latest production, "Bringing Out the Dead." Filmed with combative close-ups, dizzying camera angles and hyperkinetic cutting, "Dead" is aggressive from the start ‹ everything we have come to expect from Scorsese.

Based on Joe Connelly's 1998 autobiographical novel, "Dead" reunites Scorsese with screenwriter Paul Schrader. The two are responsible for "Taxi Driver," the 1976 portrayal of urban despair that made its writer-director duo famous. "Dead" echoes "Driver" at many points, displaying a city and characters that are grim and confused. But there is something very different this time; Scorsese is on the side of the angels.

Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage) is a New York City medic who is constantly confronted by the ghosts of the people he couldn't save, particularly that of a young girl named Rose. Her face appears everywhere he looks and her voice emanates from dead bodies. Frank drives through the city night with a rotating cast of partners, all of whom are more numbed to the daily pressures of their job than he is. He meets diffident Larry (John Goodman); happy, racist psychopath Tom (Tom Sizemore); and, most enjoyable of them all, Marcus (Ving Rhames), who has no trouble wielding a hypodermic needle but would much rather invoke the name of God.

One night, Frank meets Mary Burke (Patricia Arquette), whose father has suffered a heart attack. Mary, a former junkie, hasn't spoken to her father in three years, but she becomes deeply troubled when she realizes he's so close to death. Frank is even more concerned for her than he is for her father. He begins to fall deeply in love with her, checks up on her at her apartment, invites her to have a piece of pizza at the hospital with him. He's as gentle as a lamb with her, but he's an exhausted one, all bruised and battered.

Cage is the perfect actor to bring Frankıs inner turmoil to the surface. The corny voice-over lines of Paul Schrader's script were made for his eyes (with their weary, purplish half-moons) even more so than for his voice: "I'd always had nightmares. But now the ghosts didn't wait for me to sleep."

Instead of allowing for the incredible nuances that Cage always brings to his performances, the character of Frank sews it all up for him.

But there are those moments that allow Cage to do what he does best. When he's trying to revive Mary's father, the man's family fanned out around him in the living room in frozen semi-circle, he blurts out, "Do you have any music?" Picking up on their numbed confusion, he explains: "I think it helps if you play something he likes." Moments later, Sinatra is crooning and the man has a heartbeat. It may be the movie's most perfect moment, when the audience realizes that Frank's job brings him in close contact, not just with bodies, but with souls.

Rhames gives the most delightful and energized performance in the movie. His scenes, particularly his sassy flirtation with a honey-voiced dispatcher (Queen Latifah) let some much-needed light leak into the picture. Arquette is charming but neurotic as the dazed, soft-spoken Mary. She seems to walk around in a haze of confusion half the time, but when she smiles, the air around her seems to clear miraculously. Her scenes with Cage (her husband in real life) have an emotional quality that sets them apart from the rest of the film, but they are sometimes overlong.

Scorsese uses pop music better than any other director, and he fills this film with Janis Joplin, the Clash, Van Morrison and REM, working in elements of the story that otherwise might have gone unnoticed. Against Johnny Thunders' "You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory," Frank and Larry whiz down the city streets as if they were trying to run down the buzzing lights around them. During Frank's scenes with Mary, the music is uplifting, even happy, with Natalie Merchantıs voice urging us to forget the cares and worries of the previous night.

"Dead" is a sweeping story of life and death, angels and ghosts, urban tragedy and redemption. It may not be the best film in Scorsese's long career, but there are several moments where the darkness fades, and we see his true abilities as a director.

At one point, we see a suffering drug dealer, impaled on a spike, taking delight in a "fireworks" display set against the city skyline, and Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" swells up from nowhere. The fireworks aren't really fireworks at all (theyıre actually a group of policemen are trying to free the man with the help of blowtorches), and what heıs seeing are flying sparks.

Scorsese possesses an unbelievable power to make a frightening moment extraordinary ‹ in this case, extraordinarily beautiful.