Asphalt City
A web of personal interaction and moral reckoning against the backdrop of one tragic night, pulsating with suspense and emotion, Asphalt City, takes a piercingly honest look at the broken back of the American healthcare system, yet its tone quickly becomes a hard pill to swallow due to its gloomy nature.
Immersed in the seedy world of urban emergency medical treatment, Asphalt City, (formerly dubbed Black Flies) is a gripping drama-thriller set in the beating heart of New York City.
Visually arresting, harrowing, and vivacious, Asphalt City is scripted by storytellers Ryan King and Ben Mac Brown and directed by the visionary Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire. It will definitely have viewers grinding their teeth, keeping them on the edge of their tension thresholds.
In the film danger and desperation abound as Ollie (Tye Sheridan) and Gene (Sean Penn), portrayed with riveting authenticity and raw passion, traverse a terrain wracked by sirens wailing in a frenzy of semi-illuminated, billowing blood-red-riddled streets of New York City. A darker reality, however, lies beneath the city’s incessant grinding pace and threatens to engulf them both. The incomparable Raquel Nave, Kali Reis, Michael Pitt, Katherine Waterston, Mike Tyson and the rest of the outstanding ensemble cast, engross audiences with their believable performances.
The intensity of the film is fostered by the reality that rescuing lives is an incredibly stressful and unforgiving job. Sauvaire successfully focuses attention on the plight of overworked and undervalued paramedics.
Asphalt City is not for the faint of heart, it’s an unforgettable upsetting, unsettling onslaught on the senses with its bleak, brutal, yet engaging story and visceral, vehement cinematography.
Despite its message and lack of visual subtlety, it fails to offer anything new, with plot points already covered in Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out The Dead, the atmospheric, Schraderesque-film trades on worn-out and outdated ideas keeping this film from reaching a higher blip on the EKG readout of films in the genre.
Asphalt City releases in cinemas on Friday, 29 March 2024.
-Dirk Lombard Fourie