DRINKING ... DRUGS - AND THAT'S JUST THE PARAMEDICS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

A kind of low-budget appetizer for Martin Scorsese's upcoming ``Bringing Out the Dead,'' ``Broken Vessels'' follows a pair of paramedics on a 911 call to their own doom.

A stylish, gritty little number that should alarm anyone who's even considering having a medical emergency, the movie ultimately blows a lot of good acting and persuasive ambience on, well, too many drugs. In director Scott Ziehl and co-writers David Baer and John McMahon's minimum-wage L.A., everybody's flying high on one kind of controlled substance or another. This includes the people you call when someone ODs.

Our unreliable narrator is Tom (Jason London), a med school grad from Pennsylvania with a quizzical wish to ply the low-paying ambulance trade. He's assigned to veteran driver Jimmy (Todd Field, seen briefly in ``Eyes Wide Shut'' and even more briefly in ``The Haunting''), who's burned through an inordinately high number of rookie partners.

Tom soon discovers why. Although personable and dedicated to back-watching teamwork, Jimmy drinks, smokes all kinds of dope and turns the back of the unit into a rolling love machine, all while on duty. He shakes down dealers at drug emergency calls and buys illegal pharmaceuticals from the driver's seat. Jimmy's only real relationships are with his nursing home-bound grandfather (who is also a junkie) and his speed-freak sculptress neighbor (Susan Traylor), who eventually establishes a meth lab in her garage.

The apparently impressionable Tom is sucked deeper and deeper into the deceptively ``together'' Jimmy's living pipe dream. Tom's only potential escape route, a relationship with a sweet young nurse (Roxana Zal, who produced the film with Ziehl), is inevitably fumbled. You feel for the lost kid, yet there are indications, well-planted, that he's not the corrupted innocent he appears to be.

``Broken Vessels'' is strongest when it illustrates the workaday horrors paramedics must deal with, and with how these particular rescuing angels abuse the trust the public unthinkingly places in them. The style ranges from the vulgar verite of TV's ``Cops'' to more expressionistic stretches, with some well-deployed humor worked in to relieve the overall grimness.

The acting remains very good as Tom and Jimmy's narcotic spiral takes over the narrative, but it's something we've seen in a hundred other movies that didn't start out as distinctively as this one.

Disappointing and tedious as it may become, ``Broken Vessels'' remains a well-observed and smartly executed slice-of-life drama. And while it surely doesn't represent the general quality of ambulance attendants in our fair megalopolis, it sure gives you a lot to ponder that you probably never otherwise would have - or would have wanted to.

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THE FACTS

The film: ``Broken Vessels'' (R; drug use, violence, sex, language, nudity).

The stars: Todd Field, Jason London, Roxana Zal, Susan Traylor.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Scott Ziehl. Written by Ziehl, John McMahon and David Baer. Produced by Zal and Ziehl. Released by Zeitgeist Films.

Running time: One hour, 30 minutes.

Playing: Nuart, West L.A.

Our rating: Three Stars

CAPTION(S):

Photo

PHOTO Jimmy (Todd Field, left) and Tom (Jason London) are paramedics with more than their share of personal problems in ``Broken Vessels.''