Factual error: When Cy Coates is impaled on the terrace guardrail, we see a shot of various emergency vehicles in front of the building, including FDNY Rescue Company 4. Rescue 4 is the rescue company for the borough of Queens; the movie takes place in Manhattan, so Rescue 1 would have been the unit that responded.
Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
1 factual error
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Nicolas Cage, John Goodman, Ving Rhames, Tom Sizemore, Patricia Arquette, Tom Arnold
Revealing mistake: When the prostitute changes into the girl who haunts Nicolas Cage, the film jumps as the camera passes by the pillar in the ambulance.
Griss: Griss cannot abide the funk tonight.
Trivia: In the beginning scene where the crew responds to a cardiac arrest, they defibrillate (shock) the patient three times in under fifteen seconds. When the monitor appears on the screen his rhythm appears to be asystole, which the current (2015) guidelines state should not be shocked. The 2015 AHA guidelines also call for two minutes of compressions between shocks. One might think the writers made a mistake; however, the recommendation not to shock asystole only appeared as recently as 1992. The medics in Bringing Out the Dead would have learned to give three shocks in rapid succession and likely would have shocked asystole as a precaution because it can be hard to distinguish from fine ventricular fibrillation. The film is actually medically accurate considering it is set in the early 90s. (00:04:35)
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