R | 1h 45m | Dramedy | 2025
“Code 3” is basically Martin Scorcese’s “Bringing Out the Dead” (1999)—but much, much funnier.
The audience rides along with a couple of burnt-out EMTs during their jam-packed, 24-hour shift in frenetic Los Angeles. It’s got the same bickering-partner dynamic that Nicholas Cage and Ving Rhames have in “Bringing Out the Dead.” In both movies, the partners argue about who gets to drive, and use the same line: “I wheel, you heal—period!”
What begins as an almost slapstick, side-splittingly funny comedy eventually takes an insightful and dramatic turn, as we accumulate knowledge of just how nerve-wracking, tragic, PTSD-inducing, underpaid, underappreciated, and subject to supercilious medical doctors’ withering criticism—their dangerous profession is.
“Code 3” is easily the best feature film I’ve seen this year.
Paramedics
“Code Black” (specifically at Los Angeles County General Hospital where the term originated) means the ER has a line around the block, and doctors won’t be going home any time soon. “Code 3” (also known as “going hot,” or “going disco”) is defined by paramedic Randy Gray (Rainn Wilson) as an ambulance with lights and sirens on, speeding to an emergency call.
We meet Randy and his longtime work partner Mike (Lil Rel Howery) as they arrive at a drug overdose in progress, with a young trainee (Xolo Maridueña) in tow. They’re in for a few shocking surprises.
Later in the ER, the team catches a rant about incompetence from the insufferable Dr. Serano (Rob Riggle). The trainee quits on spot, loudly acknowledging he doesn’t have what it takes. He got puked on. Barf got in his mouth.
The 4th Wall
Director and co-writer Christopher Leone uses 4th wall breakage, allowing Wilson’s always-on-the-verge-of-a-heart-attack protagonist to address the camera and vent while simultaneously taking potshots at the dismal and pathetic state of American healthcare.
Randy explains that EMTs are the last people you see when your life is seeping away. Paramedics don’t get the luxury of happy lives; ghastly images of people’s final moments are forever branded on their brains. However, like all soldiers and first responders, they are required to detach, compartmentalize, and carry on.
Most EMTs don’t last five years, but Randy’s going on 18. While roundly acknowledged as one of the best in the business, it’s also clear to everyone who knows him that he’s probably headed for a nervous breakdown.
New Girl
Randy and Mike are soon tasked with a new ride-along, Jessica (Aimee Carrero). While preternaturally knowledgeable, whip-smart, and cocky, she’s immediately read the riot act by Randy, who suffers no fools gladly.
However, Randy’s dreams and prayers for a new job (insurance salesman) finally come through. His nightmarish career as a paramedic is finally over. He just has to survive his last shift. A countdown clock detailing the time left on his last day pops up onscreen at intervals, accompanied by a litany of medical profession salary read-outs. It turns out hospital janitors make more than overworked, underpaid EMTs, who are tasked with saving lives in the most harrowing situations, with the worst possible outcomes.
Gallows Humor
While the ubiquitous first-responder gallows humor in “Code 3” isn’t quite as dark and wickedly gleeful as that of Tom Sizemore’s character in “Bringing Out the Dead,” Randy and Mike’s observations and banter with patients get huge laughs in the thoroughly engrossing first act. While their interactions with the mentally ill, addicted, and homeless patients are played for laughs, none of it is at the expense of the stark, underlying truth.
They know the destitute on a first name basis due to seeing them constantly. Most have serious psychiatric issues and limited or no access to medication. Tragically, many “crazy” people are off their meds because they have no alternative. The naïve Jessica soon learns that unfortunate people in these dire circumstances often intentionally stir up trouble to trigger arrests, because a trip to the ER or jail will result in food and shelter.
In one particularly powerful scene, a 6-foot-6-inch African American former Marine with virulent PTSD, who only gets issued 20 daily pills per month, finds himself in the last 10 days of the month with no pills. His mind is gone. He roars from the door of his low-income housing, “I am the president of the United States of America!!”
Randy and Mike know this guy. They also know what will happen if the neighbors call the cops, and LAPD cruisers come screeching up sideways, with nervous police officers jumping out and reaching for their service pistols. This guy’s not getting the benefit of the doubt.
If cooler heads don’t prevail, this particular president of the United States will end up with a toe-tag. Randy and Mike put themselves in a touch-and-go situation to defuse the potentially deadly encounter, none of which is part of a paramedic’s job description. But for them, this kind of acting as a buffer for law enforcement is a daily concern.
Ultimately, “Code 3” casts an unfiltered gaze upon a sometimes ugly truth about paramedics as well as anybody we wouldn’t otherwise meet unless we’ve arrived at our life’s nadir. It excoriates a flawed system that screws over patients and those who try to save them.
Randy embodies a kind person doing an essential job without any real appreciation. It’s made clear that those who have the stamina and willpower to remain in the profession do it out of integrity. They want to help people, not get rich, but they definitely deserve much more.
The paramedics of “Code 3,” like the ER doctors of “Code Black,” are like sponges. You can only wring out a sponge so much before it can’t absorb the stain of anything else. This is the most important lesson to take from the film. At least the doctors get paid. “Code 3” will show you why EMTs deserve to be paid much, much more than they currently are.
Wilson, Howery, and Carrero are fantastic here. They give light to paramedics’ struggles with hilarity and heart, but everyone leaving the theater will have an even greater respect for first responders.
‘Code 3’
Director: Christopher Leone
Starring: Rainn Wilson, Lil Rel Howery, Aimee Carrero, Yvette Nicole Brown
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Release Date: Sept. 12, 2025
Rating: 4 1/2 stars out of 5
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