It is impossible to watch Christopher Leone’s Code 3 (2025) without being reminded of Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead (1999). Both films follow a single shift for an overworked, emotionally fractured paramedic, and both come liberally soaked in weary exhaustion and a declining faith in human nature. Nicolas Cage played the paramedic for Scorsese, while Leone uses The Office alumnus Rainn Wilson in an unexpected semi-dramatic mode. The key difference between the two films is that Scorsese’s take in sombre and dramatic, whereas Leone directs and co-write a bleak, misanthropic, but ultimately very funny comedy. Code 3 is not perfect, but it certainly deserves more than the DVD and streaming release to which it was relegated.

Wilson plays Randy, a worn-out 18-year paramedic veteran. Desperate to get out of the profession, he applies for a comfortable role in an insurance firm. When he is offered the new job, he must complete one final 24-hour shift before leaving the ambulance behind him. Accompanied by his regular partner Mike (Lil Rey Howard) and trainee Jessica (Aimee Carrero), Wilson strives to finish his last day with his sanity intact.

What is surprising about Code 3 is that it manages to tell a persistently funny workplace comedy while presenting a paramedic’s duties as shockingly unpleasant and incredibly stressful. Responding to the dispatcher’s call may involve people with guns, people on drugs, or complications caused by interfering bystanders or insensitive civilians. The police may or may not be in attendance. When they are, they may or may not be on the same side. One critical scenes sees Randy and Mike having to physically put themselves between a violent psychiatric patient and a trio of police officers that would just as soon shoot the patient as help him. It is regularly tense, difficult stuff, yet somehow Leone and co-writer Patrick Pianezza consistently track a humorous through-line. It is an effective comedy as well, in large part because the audience receives a healthy dose of trauma and social commentary at the same time.

Rainn Wilson has consistently been one of America’s most underrated performers for some years now, and deftly handles the balance of comedy and drama throughout. Randy is regularly not only gruff and jaded but actively objectionable, and it is testament to Wilson’s talent and technique that he still comes out of the film as a relatable and even likeable protagonist. Lil Rey Howard follows a very similar model to Ving Rhames in Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead; there is a little bit of a stereotype to the character, but he plays around it well. The same is largely true of Aimee Carrero as Jessica.

Rob Riggle is particularly effective as Dr Serano, a hospital emergency ward head whose constant life of crisis – overloaded with patients, frustrated at his lack of resources – leads him to take out his frustrations on the paramedics that keep delivering more patients. It is an excellent representation of a broken system running wildly out of control.

In Australia at least Code 3 has effectively crept onto the market without fanfare or proper promotion. It deserves better, and 25 years ago would have comfortably enjoyed a theatrical release. My advice for anybody seeking a decent comedy with some choice elements of moral outrage is to track it down and sample its considerable merits.

Code 3 is available in Australia on DVD, digital rental, and streaming via Amazon Prime.