Asphalt City is coming to theatres this spring. Get ready to experience the harrowing dark side of being a paramedic and helping people in an oppressive and seedy city full of violence and pain.
Asphalt City is directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire of A Prayer Before Dawn fame and is based on a 2008 novel by Shannon Burke titled Black Flies. The film was also initially titled the same but that was later changed. The movie premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival in 2023 but had been awaiting a theatrical release date.
Asphalt City is set to be released theatrically on March 29, 2024. The film's trailer was released recently, which offered a look at the much-awaited dark medical drama-thriller. Asphalt City follows the tale of two paramedics who spend their nights riding through hellish New York City in a van and helping people as and when they are called in to do so. But things are much more complex in the dystopic setting.
Asphalt City stars the talented Sean Penn as veteran paramedic Rut (short for Rutkovsky) and Tye Sheridan as his newbie, idealist partner Cross. Rut is a brusque, mean-mannered and haggard old pro who has seen so much death and misery in life that he is unsure whether he is the saviour or the lifetaker. His immediate crisis lies in losing his young daughter when his ex-wife moves upstate.
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Cross is just a few weeks into his new job as a paramedic, working hard to get into medical school. Idealistic, innocent, and full of hope of saving people, the young man is in for a rude shock when he experiences the practical horrors of his job. Cross is forced to face the fact that he cannot save everyone and that sometimes nothing can be done to help.
Forced to face the moral and ethical ambiguity that comes with the job, Cross looks up to a disenchanted Rut as the two handle more and more harrowing cases on duty, making us wonder the depths to which humanity can drop. As the trailer shows, the paramedics are jostled by a crowd as they save people, try to heal somebody with a dog barking viciously, and help a woman who took heroin right after giving birth at home to deal with pain.
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