Broken Vessels (1998)

From writer/director Scott Ziehl comes the shocking and unnerving drama Broken Vessels. The film chronicles the lives of two emergency medical technicians (EMTs) whose thrill in life saving is surpassed only by their destructive and all-too-frequent thirst for another kind of rush, heroin. This potentially lethal combination is pushed to its limit as the pair embark on a hellish journey through an underworld of drugs, theft and ultra-deviance. It is this paradox which lies at the center of "Broken Vessels" and serves to dismantle an established and sacred faith in the last of our modern-day saviors. Tom (Jason London), a fresh-faced med school graduate from Back East, lands a paramedic job with an ambulance company in Los Angeles. He is partnered with the cunning Jimmy (Todd Field), a veteran ambulance driver who has gone through partners like needles. For Jimmy, the job is a series of bribes and tricks of the trade. He thrives on the violence and brutality he witnesses daily and augments them with drugs, alcohol and sex. Soon after beginning work, Tom fumbles on an emergency call, and Jimmy easily covers for him. A trust is established, and the two quickly become close. Before he knows it, Tom begins to looks at Jimmy as a kind of mentor, an adrenaline guru/junkie who teaches him how to score, scam and get high. The two quickly descend into series of dangerous drug deals, thefts, and excesses that lead them down a path of slow self-immolation punctuated by quick but lethal rushes. For Tom, the move to LA was supposed to be a new start. Haunted by a drunk-driving accident in which he killed a child, Tom is burdened by the weight of his life and finds a kind of nihilistic freedom in his new life with Jimmy. With a kind of Kurtzian abandon, Jimmy wields his power over Tom and is able to easily seduce him into his twisted and degenerative life in the ambulance and on the streets. The two emerge as a warped dynamic duo, a crusading pair of reckless pranksters in whose hands are trusted the lives of unwitting citizens and victims.