Asphalt City

Despite the director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire throwing everything at the screen, the star is frequently sublime in a brutal and unrelenting film.

Grabs you by the throat about four or five times, but then you got all that other space, where we gotta talk about our feelings.

I found this gloomy, gloomy, gloomy, and it made me sad because I like Tye Sheridan as an actor. This movie isn't doing him any favors.

Sometimes maximum intensity doesn’t yield optimal results.

[The main characters'] dynamic is familiar at best and dull at worst, particularly for those who long ago tired of the tragedies of toxic machismo.

Not for one second, not for one frame, does director Jean Stéphane’s bruising and bloody New York City drama thriller drive even near the neighborhood of subtlety. This is a stark, pitch-black, violent and gruesome waking nightmare of a story.

…an extreme film, hard to watch at times, but with less of the self-appointed poetry of Martin Scorsese’s Bringing out the Dead and a darker, more nihilistic streak that sticks in your mind…

Despite a corny ending that fizzles with clichéd dark drama tropes, I really loved the majority of the film and its nightmarish, gruesome look at the gritty reality of paramedics navigating the chaos and violence that beats beneath America’s urban jungle.

What sadly takes center stage is how much the film seems to want to make paramedic work seem as unattractive and uninspirational as possible.

It's all just so grossly misjudged. By indulging so heavily in its unyielding misery, Sauvaire and Co only end up dehumanising those they are trying to celebrate and alienating anyone who tries to put themselves through it.