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A Gore-Soaked Spectacle of Depravity and Pain
You can practically smell the Asphalt director chain-smoking behind the camera, muttering about spitting in the face of humanity.
Starring Tye Sheridan and Sean Penn as a pair of EMTs making their way through an endless gauntlet of violence, cruelty, and blood, Asphalt is the kind of movie that could fuel a year’s worth of wet dreams for any politicians eager to portray New York as a crime-soaked hellscape. But the film, directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, isn’t trying all that hard to be realistic, as evidenced by its stylized passages featuring flashing, kaleidoscopic sirens, inchoate shrieking, and surging Wagner overtures. Wide-eyed rookie Ollie Cross (Sheridan), a young, aspiring doctor eager to get some real-world experience while studying for the MCATs, is matched with the profane and perpetually pissy Rutkovsky (Penn), who’s diligent at his job but has been doing it for so long that he feels nothing for those he’s supposed to be saving.
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