Asphalt City, 2024.
Directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire.
Starring Tye Sheridan, Sean Penn, Katherine Waterston, Michael Pitt, Kali Reis, Mike Tyson, Onie Maceo Watlington, Raquel Nave, Shelly Burrell, Gbenga Akinnagbe, and Daniel Foote.
SYNOPSIS:
Ollie Cross is a young paramedic assigned to the NYC night shift with an uncompromising and seasoned partner Gene Rutkovsky. Each 911 call is often dangerous and uncertain, putting their lives on the line every day to help others.
Initially, it seems as if director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire made Asphalt City as a means of appreciation for the hard work paramedics do, sometimes without thanks from the gunshot wound victims, drug addicts, or cardiac arrest patients they are trying to save. To be fair, it is also based on the book Black Flies by Shannon Burke (with a screenplay adaptation from Ben Mac Brown and Ryan King), but the longer this seemingly endless movie goes on, it increasingly feels like the filmmakers have nothing but contempt for these suffering civilians, something that comes across ugly and troublesome as with each response, the people affected turn out to be unflattering depictions of minorities.
However, that’s not what sinks Asphalt City. There is a gritty authenticity to the EMT work and the situations they find themselves in. Whether it’s domestic violence, an HIV-positive heroin addict bleeding out on her bed after childbirth, or the general abrasive craziness from people coming inside an ambulance freaking out, hurling obscenities, and wondering what is happening to them, there is a realness here allowing one to overlook some unfortunate casting decisions slightly. None of this is helped by the fact that the film centers on white paramedics, giving the whole endeavor an offputting white savior undertones.
Of those white characters, Asphalt City primarily follows rookie EMT Ollie Cross (Tye Sheridan), assigned to the east side of New York City. Veteran Gene Rutkovsky (Sean Penn) notices his eagerness to help society and takes him under his wing as a new partner. For a while, Tye Sheridan convincingly sells escalating trauma from Ollie’s observations in the field, going from green to shellshocked and fighting off a jaded mentality like Gene, with Sean Penn giving a grizzled, broken turn with eyes that have seen some horrific shit go down. In what feels like a never-ending series of relentlessly bleak EMT responses, their performances are involving, and one does begin to feel and understand the plight of how hard it must be to continue caring and trying to do good when the patients are unable to show gratitude for several reasons properly.
The issue is that the second half, which brings in a second partner for Ollie once Gene is benched for committing a disastrous mistake, fails to make Ollie’s turn to outright cynicism feel believable properly. Paired with Lafontaine (Michael Pitt), a nihilistic metalhead with a God complex once patients end up in his ambulance, the approach, which already isn’t subtle to begin with, feels exaggerated. There most likely are damaged EMTs questioning whether or not these people deserve help or to keep living, but Michael Pitt’s is walking volatility that never once feels grounded in the dark reality presented here.
Some will outright accuse all of Asphalt City for being shockingly edgy for the sake of doing so, but there are at least believable human beings at the center until Lafontaine reenters the film (he is introduced earlier on, stuffing a dead dog into Ollie’s locker as punishment for showing concern over an animal during a response), setting fire to the elements that were working. Nevertheless, five minutes on the job with Lafontaine accentuates Ollie’s unraveling toward the people he is trying to save and his girlfriend/friends with benefits partner.
There is also no way of knowing for sure what his relationship is with the woman because the filmmakers are only concerned with showing her naked and having sex with Ollie, who seems to have loads of unresolved mommy issues (one of the first interactions seen between these two is him lifting her out of a bathtub after having previously opened up to Gene about his mother’s suicide when he was young and how he couldn’t lift her out of there.)
Asphalt City probably would have benefited from exploring the personal lives of Ollie and Gene more, and one wonders if the book does. A case could also be made that since Ollie spends some of his time at home yelling at his “crazy Chinese” roommates to quiet down while studying for a medical exam, maybe it’s for the best. Still, between Ollie’s tortured personal life and Gene’s family problems, there is more to explore beyond the traumatic nature of the job.
However, even when Asphalt City finds the direction to go with some of this, it feels too late and culminates with resolutions that don’t feel earned. The grimy, thankless, appropriately unsettling depiction of EMT work only engages to a point, unable to sustain 2+ hours of storytelling.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
