Not for one second, not for one frame, does director Jean Stéphane’s bruising and bloody New York City drama thriller “Asphalt City” drive even near the neighborhood of subtlety. This is a stark, pitch-black, violent and gruesome waking nightmare of a story — a war movie for all intents and purposes, only the soldiers are paramedics, and the battlegrounds are the seediest and most dangerous corners and alleys and apartments in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Time and again, paramedics desperately trying to save lives have to exclaim, “I’m not a cop!” to the locals who don’t trust anyone with a uniform coming into their world and are pushing up against them even as they’re trying to do their jobs.
Originally titled “Black Flies” and based on the novel of the same name by Shannon Burke (with Ryan King and Ben Mac Brown doing the adaptation), “Asphalt City” is at least as dark and bruising as Martin Scorsese’s “Bringing Out the Dead” (1999), which starred Nicolas Cage and John Goodman as New York City paramedics.
With virtually every scene taking place in the deep of night or the gloom of day, Sean Penn gives a laser-focused and effectively brooding performance as Gene “Rut” Rutkovsky, a veteran paramedic who was one the first responders on the scene on 9/11 and has long since given up any grand illusions about being some kind of hero. The job is the job, and the nights are long and hellish, as Rut and his colleagues tend to gunshot wounds, domestic violence victims and junkies.
In the classic rookie-veteran pairing, Tye Sheridan is Ollie Cross, an idealistic sort who hopes to pass the MCAT exam and become a doctor. The symbolism in “Asphalt City” runs heavy; not only do we have that last name of “Cross,” but when Ollie is off duty, he wears a jacket with angel’s wings on the back, and there’s a painting of a falling angel in his shabby apartment room.
As Rut and Ollie navigate a world teeming with unsavory characters (and one of the most ferocious dogs in recent film history), we’re introduced to a variety of supporting characters. Katherine Waterston has a memorable one-scene cameo as Rut’s ex-wife and the mother of his daughter, while Raquel Nave is the single mother who hooks up with Ollie for sex that will shake the walls. Michael Pitt is a veteran paramedic who’s the equivalent of the combat soldier who is on the edge of a total and violent breakdown.
Kali Reis (“True Detective”) is stunningly good as a heroin-addicted woman who gives birth while a needle is stuck in her arm. We even have Mike Tyson as the chief in charge of the paramedics, and once we get past the stunt casting, Tyson is quite good.
With cinematographer David Ungaro providing hand-held docudrama work in saturated colors, “Asphalt City” is bleak and heavy-handed, yet we get the feeling a lot of paramedics in major cities would say it’s not all that far from the harsh realities of the job.