Shortly following an unfortunate incident in Pennsylvania, naive young Tom (the boyishly charming Jason London of "Dazed and Confused") moves to Los Angeles and gets a job working as a paramedic so he can put his past behind him. He's partnered with weary, burnt-out, sardonic veteran medic Jimmy (a mesmerizing performance by Todd Field), a blithely blasé cynic who alleviates the stress of his unsparingly high pressure job by having sex with prostitutes, swilling booze, and smoking dope. Jimmy inducts the callow Tom into his manic, edgy, drug-fueled lifestyle and pretty soon both guys are spinning on a downward spiral to serious premature oblivion as the increasingly desperate pair resort to theft and dealing to support their ever-worsening habits.
A strikingly amoral and keenly observed seriocomic feature about guilt, denial, redemption and drug addiction that scores strongly with its breathlessly quick pace, fractured editing, beautiful, sometimes hallucinatory visuals, dark, despairing tone, wickedly black sense of humor, and a dizzyingly constant, frenzied, hopped-up bustling vitality which deftly captures both the exciting highs and distressing lows of being wired on narcotics, director/co-screenwriter Scott Ziehl takes the viewer on an exhilaratingly frantic cinematic trip that's thrilling and harrowing in comparable measure. What's most impressive about this extraordinary film is its admirable refusal to offer any easy way out for its strung-out protagonists and refreshing lack of heavy-handed moralizing. Moreover, the performances are uniformly superb: London and Field are outstanding in the lead roles, with excellent secondary turns by Roxanna Zal as Tom's sweet, concerned nurse girlfriend, Susan Traylor as an annoyingly loquacious speed freak, James Hong as Tom and Jimmy's irascible, overbearing jerk boss, William Smith as a loud, antagonistic biker patient, and especially the late, great Patrick Cranshaw as Jimmy's rascally, regretful dope fiend grandfather. Nervy, intense, and ultimately quite powerful, this remarkable knock-out rates highly as one of the great indie sleepers of the 90's.
A strikingly amoral and keenly observed seriocomic feature about guilt, denial, redemption and drug addiction that scores strongly with its breathlessly quick pace, fractured editing, beautiful, sometimes hallucinatory visuals, dark, despairing tone, wickedly black sense of humor, and a dizzyingly constant, frenzied, hopped-up bustling vitality which deftly captures both the exciting highs and distressing lows of being wired on narcotics, director/co-screenwriter Scott Ziehl takes the viewer on an exhilaratingly frantic cinematic trip that's thrilling and harrowing in comparable measure. What's most impressive about this extraordinary film is its admirable refusal to offer any easy way out for its strung-out protagonists and refreshing lack of heavy-handed moralizing. Moreover, the performances are uniformly superb: London and Field are outstanding in the lead roles, with excellent secondary turns by Roxanna Zal as Tom's sweet, concerned nurse girlfriend, Susan Traylor as an annoyingly loquacious speed freak, James Hong as Tom and Jimmy's irascible, overbearing jerk boss, William Smith as a loud, antagonistic biker patient, and especially the late, great Patrick Cranshaw as Jimmy's rascally, regretful dope fiend grandfather. Nervy, intense, and ultimately quite powerful, this remarkable knock-out rates highly as one of the great indie sleepers of the 90's.