Paramedics: burnout and skill

 

   Movies about paramedics don't exactly roll off the Hollywood assembly line, but we’ve had a few. Remember Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead, a 1999 movie that waded into lurid New York City territory with Nicolas Cage playing a burnt-out paramedic?

  We’ve also had nonfiction entries,  including the BBC series Ambulance and Honorable But Broken: EMS in Crisis, both of which can be viewed on Amazon Prime.

  Because paramedics engage in high-stress work, their lives bristle with life-and-death dramas in which their skills constantly are tested. Dealing with a body that has been pried out of a wrecked automobile doesn’t exactly qualify as an activity most of us would consider part of a dream job.

     In Code 3, Rainn Wilson plays Randy, a paramedic teetering on the edge of burnout. Set during the course of a single 24-hour shift, the movie teams Wilson with Lil Rel Howrey, who plays Randy's ambulance-driving partner.

     Laced with rueful humor, a series of California-based episodes put Randy through physical and emotional challenges as he wonders about the meaning of his life. Can he make a real difference in a job that’s constantly overwhelming?

    Aimee Carrero portrays Jessica, a trainee thrown into the mix. Uncorrupted by over-exposure to tragedy and untarnished by the cynicism of veterans, Jessica approaches her job believing she can help.

     Director Christopher Leone, working from a screenplay credited to him and Patrick Pianezza, a former paramedic, draws on the real-life experiences of those who ply the paramedics trade. Safe to assume, then, that we're watching reality-based drama.

     Some of the movie's tension arises from recurring conflicts between the paramedics and the staff of an already-packed emergency room where sick, wounded, or drugged-out patients are transported.

    Dr. Serano (Rob Riggle), a smug emergency room doc, makes no attempt to conceal his disdain for paramedics, viewing them as nuisances who add to emergency room glut. Overdone? Maybe, but every movie seems to need a resident jerk.

     Yvette Nicole Brown portrays Shanice, the harried supervisor of the city’s paramedics. She insists that Randy finish his shift, even though he’s landed a lower-stress job with an insurance company and plans to leave the EMS world.

      Office veteran Wilson gives Randy a convincing mix of skill and loathing, sometimes breaking the fourth wall to talk directly to viewers. The rest of the cast is equally game.

      Individual calls made by the paramedics — including one in which they're attacked by a shotgun-wielding woman — are compelling, although the story's overall arc feels predictable, which means Code 3 seldom feels freshly imagined. A richer story would have helped.

     Code 3 gets its points across, and it makes us grateful for those who toil in fields few of us would want to till. That's almost -- if not quite -- enough.