User Reviews (21)

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  • samueller6913 December 2000
    this film came out about the same time as "bringing out the dead". with all due respect to Martin and Nick-this is the movie they could have made if hollywood hadn't warped the way a story is told. style over substance. with that said-this is a tough film to watch. the performances are dead solid perfect. the voice over is a difficult device to pull off and it doesn't always work here, but... there was a truth that i wanted to watch play out.
  • I came out of Broken Vessels feeling like I was 19 again, like nothing mattered except the next rush. The passing cars with their people going home from work, and the rest of the pedestrian surroundings, meant nothing to me. Which is very similar to the two main characters in this movie. This film is a raw, intense trip, shot all over the gritty side of L.A. I grew up here, and the film is true to the city, at least this perspective of it. The major flaw in Broken Vessels is that there was no universal theme, no message it delivered. The movie didn't seem to be *about* anything other than its own story. But the visual and emotional experience I got while viewing the film, in large part due to excellent directing by Scott Ziehl and acting by Todd Field, was well worth the price of admission.
  • allyjack21 October 1999
    This is a neat little movie with a lot of energy and control - it's not overly flashy or gimmicky and doesn't indulge in excessive Tarantino-aping; the Field character is truly sleazy, but the movie keeps everything within plausible limits of degradation and loss of control, so that his pull on London is easy to understand without losing moral perspective. It's a two-hander at heart, but through various secondary characters - especially Field's Gramps, a hopeless drug addict - it manages to carve out a plausible broader social base (even if you wonder how the guys ever manage to get through any of their shifts intact). Some of the specific exposition is tedious, or overly familiar and dutiful, or just marginally amusing, but the meat of it lies simply in colourful incident, and in that regard it has real panache and sense of character.
  • After Having huge expectations for Scorcese's "Bringing Out The Dead" I was somewhat disappointed. But where the hell did BROKEN VESSELS come from? This film is everything the other one promised to deliver but didn't. My brother sent me a DVD saying "This is the best Indie film of the year." The art work on the cover was dreadful. It looked like a stupid B horror film. The back of the thing had some awards listed and kudos for the actors. I watched it last night. What a ride! Who is Scott Ziehl? Who is Susan Traylor? And who is Todd Field? Field should have been nominated for this performance. I can only guess that the film went straight to video. Too bad more people won't see it. The film accurately depicted the decline of two young men into self delusion and drug abuse. Far better (dare I say) than "Trainspotting."
  • "Broken Vessels" tells of a rookie EMT who teams up with an experienced and opportunistic partner who makes his own rules of how to paramedic in the streets of Los Angeles. A journeyman film at best, "BV" is not so much a story as it is a low credibility exposition of the more unusual and peculiar situations paramedics might encounter. Works better as an action flick than a drama.
  • In my job as a guitar teacher, I come in contact with many kids who are at the place in their lives where they are very impressionable and often have a glamorized view of drug use. I have shown this movie to several kids as an example of how drug abuse can get out of control in a hurry and ruin lives. I point out that the main character, Tom, had no intention of becoming an addict, but before he knew it, he had become one, and it was a short ride to hell from there. This movie makes this point without seeming like a health class documentary. The kids I've shown it too seemed to get the message. I give this movie a high rating, if for no other reason, because it helps me to possibly save the kids from becoming what I myself had once been.
  • I felt that this movie is well made. It is hardcore and in your face about the seriouse issues that it deals with. It doesn't exploit them or make fun. It has humor in the right places, not in the wrong places. The acting is great and the production is good to. Definitely a good movie. ***
  • Warning: Spoilers
    so whether Scorcese ripped off "Broken Vessels" for his waaaay below average "Bringing Out The Dead", or vice versa, either way the responsible party should have a good smack upside the head for putting together a bland, predictable, cliché-riddled mess that shouldn't have been committed to film ... what a waste of time on my part having to sit thru both of these hapless "dramas / thrillers" neither of which had very much of either in them ...

    OK so we have paramedics who are under constant stress due to their jobs ... in "Broken Vessels" they deal with it (one guess here, folks, just read the title), yep! they deal with it by taking drugs ... even tho the fresh-faced, wide-eyed innocent Midwestern boy from Pennsylvania tries to refuse ... he really, really, really tries ... for about five minutes ... then he's doing heroin ... of course then we see the first part of a flashback to him driving down a pristine country lane while upending a can of beer ... and in the first ten minutes of the film he's asked ooohhhh about a dozen times why he's moved from Pennsylvania to Los Angeles ... 'just a change of scenery' is his answer in both his voice-over and acting part ... but we can figure out in about three seconds that anyone wanting a change of scenery while having flashbacks of drinking and driving and insisting really really hard that he doesn't even want a beer that back in good ol' Altoona he ran someone over while out drinking that beer he keeps having a flashback about ... and this of course is going to lead to having a beer and then immediately to heroin because, hey, as everyone knows, beer is the gateway drug to heroin ... you have one beer and then WHAMMO, you are on the BIG H, my friend ... not the little H but the big one ... not even the medium H but the BIG ONE, THE BIG H ... beer is sooooo evil that way ... even the Budweiser Clydesdales are all strung out on the BIG H just from hauling a big-ass wagon of fake beer kegs around to parades throughout America ... and you can imagine how big an H a Clydesdale needs to get his fix ... it's a BIG OL' H, pal o' mine ...

    and we can all figure out pretty quick what's gonna happen to the character of sweet ol' "Gramps" ... he's a junkie who has been friends with the lead junkie on the paramedic team since he was 15 (the lead junkie paramedic btw has for some mysterious reason gone thru a lot of partners thru the years ... hhhhmmm, i still haven't figured out that one yet) ... he's not related apparently but just one of those nice ol' Gramps that all junkies have in their lives to keep them on the straight and narrow path of heroin use ... and when Gramps says something profound to the lesser of the junkie paramedic team ("When people talk about living, they're not talking about this" ... yep, that's the deepest line in the movie ... right there ... yep, about as deep as a Clydesdale's stall if it hasn't been cleaned for a few days), Gramps dies ... and the lesser junkie is now worried about how the morer junkie is going to fill the hole left by the Grampa junkie dying ... yep, i guess that's the first thing we all worry about when that happens ...

    and so it goes and goes and goes ... really ... banging my head against the wall would have been a more productive way to spend the 90 minutes or so i spent watching this movie ... toss in Scorcese's hunk of celluloid crapola and that would be about three hours of head banging productivity ... if you haven't seen either of these film's yet, take my advice, choose banging your head against the wall ... you'll thank me later and stay away from the beer!!! it's the gateway, man, the GATEWAY!!!
  • This is a film that once seen, the viewer will never forget. I'm at a loss for the low score here at IMDb. The performances are riveting and the depiction of generational drug abuse is something of which to take notice.

    Those that think this dumps on the EMT profession, need to get real. What? You think that there are no abusers in this field of work? In fact, the one time I had to ride in a "bus," the EMT was starting an IV and I said "you guys haven't been cruising the park before coming here, have you?" He started laughing and told me how much he loved this film.

    Of course, these guys could have been in any profession, but the superior irony would have been lost. This is one drug film I can recommend without hesitation, as it is chilling and stark. It in no way "glamorizes" drug use or the culture.
  • This movie is garbage. All this is about is drug use. This is not a EMT/ Paramedic movie. This is a drug movie right there with Spun, Requiem for a Dream. Depressing as all hell, unrealistic & sick. Can't believe I was hoping for a true ems movie. Guess they don't exist since this & Bringing Out the Dead trash the profession. Already bad enough being the most hard-working, underpaid, underappreciated, most stressful, physically & mentally taxing profession in the country. Why make it worse with drugs when the job has enough misery on it's own? At the same time, people who do this job know it's difficult & our proud of what they have gave and still give. -Paramedic (who stopped drinking and doing drugs many, many years ago)
  • I was floored by this movie. Having spent seven years in various Washington state prisons alongside the disenfranchised casualties of the idiotic and doomed "war on drugs",I am no stranger to the deleterious effects of drug abuse and I thought this movie was one of the very few anti-drug movies that really got the message across without preaching or appearing to glamorize drugs. Jason London quite impressed me with his portrayal of a small town innocent corrupted by big city vices. But the film belongs to Todd Field; he gives an Oscar-worthy performance.This is a classic, really. Right up there with Dugstore Cowboy.
  • I just saw this film on cable. It's fantastic. Why was it not in theaters? Jason London and Todd Field are amazing together. Scott Ziehl certainly has a future as a filmmaker. I guess it's true that great films are discovered as "Cable Classics." The fact that Broken Vessels is so superior to Bringing Up The Dead, and did still not get released, says alot about the state of independent film. I missed the first few minutes and so I stopped by my local BlockBuster to see if a copy was in. They never heard of it. Remember this film is only three years old. Anyway, finally I tracked it down at my local specialty store. My God, the art work on the cover was enough to make me sick. It looked like some perverse horror film. The company that distributed this film are IDIOTS!!!
  • Joro-312 September 1999
    OK, the story here is some kind of cliche, but it is shot with style and also shows some good acting performances. It has some parralels with Trainspotting. The soundtrack is fantastic, also the photography. There is a bit of disappointment that such good elements are not used in more remarkable way. This movie really deserved better screenplay. Nonetheless, it is an event to watch. Strongly recommended.
  • Warning: Spoilers
    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.
  • This movie blew me away! I saw it without much expectation, but to my surprise, this one is really brilliant!

    Scott Ziehl successfully directed this masterpiece, turning an ordinary theme into a brilliant movie about life and death. He showed the human side of those ambulance drivers flawlessly.

    Jason London is brilliant as Tom. He successfully acted out the various state of his alter ego's throughout the movie. It's amazing how he transformed himself from a cheerful person to a depressed one.

    How could this one miss the Oscar nomination? Anyone can answer that?
  • Had no idea what this film was going to present itself as, and was quite surprised by the great acting of rather unknown actors who were all fantastic in every way. Todd Field, (Jimmy) is an experienced Ambulance Drive & so called medic who comes to the aid of all kinds of horrible situations and even an old man who needs a fix daily. Jimmy shows the ropes to Jason London, (Tom), who is from Pa. and has some experience at being a Paramedic; the two of them make for an interesting team who break every rule in the book and still manage to do their jobs. A crazy wild chick named Susan Taylor, (Susy) "Man of God",'05, gets interested in Jimmy & Tom and shares her deep dark secrets, besides showing off her hot body in a bikini. If you ever need an Ambulance Driver or Medic, just hope and pray you never get a pair like Jimmy & Tom !
  • Warning: Spoilers
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    This was the most disappointing video I've rented in months. Not only is it insulting to the thousands of EMTs and paramedics who work heroically across our country to save lives, but the character's actions lacked believability. Of course there are instances of medics using, but to imagine their peers are so blind and so disinterested that they would be permitted to go on duty in the condition these men were in? No way! I found the overall film a sorry waste of my time and attention. Two thumbs down and one finger up.
  • aunger-116 November 2010
    A riveting story that hooks you in early and drives you right into the ground with the characters.

    I caught it on cable, loved it, a must see if you know the world and I do having grown up in LA, u know these people are the real thing, they're out there folks, just hope they're not EMT drivers when you need em!

    Field and London are amazing and it's sad to hear the problems London has had with drug addictions of late. Guess this character became a little too close to home for him.

    So much better then the Cage flick, not even close.

    Enjoy!
  • Warning: Spoilers
    ***WARNING: POSSIBLE QUASI-SPOILER IF YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHAT THIS FILM IS ABOUT. I had never, ever heard of this film before I happened to catch it on cable recently. It starts off like some kind of hip, offbeat coming-of-age comedy about a guy from Pennsylvania who moves to Los Angeles. You don't want to believe it when, early on, the flash-forward narration says there are bad things ahead. The characters are too cool and too likable; you're pretty sure it'll all work out (whatever it is) and be a fun, light-hearted romp on the way. But this is a serious film about drug addiction, and there's really no place to go, except straight down to hell. Even so, it's an interesting ride up to a point--it's all pretty believable in a colorfully seamy way, and the acting is great. At the very end, there's a pointless revelation about the Pennsylvania guy's past--maybe it explains some things about the character, but it detracts from the "message" (if there is any) that almost anyone could get slowly sucked into a destructive lifestyle. There actually isn't much of an end, which is perhaps true to the film's realism, but is cinematically unsatisfying. Nevertheless, this movie is a neat little flawed gem to discover in the jungle of cable TV.
  • hotcarls9 March 2001
    this movie surprised me a lot. it was located in the horror section of a video store, and despite how the cover looks, it is not a horror movie. instead it is a movie that deals with drugs. fans of "trainspotting" will enjoy this movie a lot. it has some similarities with "Bringing Out the Dead".

    it has a great story and the crazy crankhead lady gives an outstanding performance. this movie is recommended!!!

    mat "drumladdy" (the hot carls)
  • This is a great film. I first watched it back in high school, and it kept me engaged the entire way through. For being a lower budget film, the acting performances are solid all around. And you have a few veteran actors (James Hong) dropping in as well. The plot is well fleshed out, and represents the terrible reality of drug abuse.

    Tom is a young paramedic who travels to the west coast to start a new job. But it becomes clear that he's also escaping a shameful part of his past. His partner Jimmy shows him the ropes of the career, and also helps him navigate his social life. Gradually, Jimmy's true nature comes out, and Tom gets sucked in to the same world of drug use. As Tom's life begins to fall apart, He also faces several ethical dilemmas, which force him to question himself and Jimmy. But can he do the right thing? And can he face the demons of his past, that he never truly confronted?

    This films also accurately portrays the lies that addicts tell themselves and those around them. I've never been an addict myself, but I have it in my family. This film well shows how it's easy to lie to yourself, and then cross a line you didn't believe you would. But then cross another line, and rinse and repeat. It portrays how people WANT to believe in the good nature of their friends and/or family who are trapped in that world, and how far they will go to maintain that lie.

    Broken Vessels is a very entertaining film. Very harrowing, very haunting. But I promise you won't be disappointed. It's just a shame that it's so hard to find. I can only ever watch it on the DVD that I bought years ago. It doesn't appear to be on any streaming platform. But if you get a hold of it, check it out.