Updated
The figure of the American firefighter in popular culture since September 11, 2001, has been synonymous with an almost reckless form of heroism on the home front.
These are the guys who climb up the exit stairs as you're rushing down them, or in the case of the bombastic action thriller Only The Brave, they're running to a bushfire while you're putting your valuables in a cardboard box and getting in your car.
If testosterone was flammable, you'd probably need to hose down the screen.
But unlike contemporary action movies like John Wick or most comic book blockbusters, Only The Brave doesn't come with a side order of irony or self-deprecation.
It's as earnest as a mid-career John Cougar Mellencamp record, with a corny love of campfires and wilderness, big dusty cars, open roads and hard graft — even if everyone's too pretty and the sunglasses fit too well.
Directed by Joseph Kocinski (Tron Legacy) and co-written by Black Hawk Down screenwriter Ken Nolan, it's based on the true story of a crew known as the Granite Mountain Hotshots who fought a devastating fire in Arizona at Yarnell Hill in 2013.
Josh Brolin plays their leader Eric Marsh, a veteran with one eye always glued to the horizon and a square jaw that could cut glass. The term "hotshots" refers to professional firefighters who deploy across the US, but when the film begins, his boys are only regular municipal firies, assigned to their small town.
To become hotshots, Eric has to lobby the local fire chief (Jeff Bridges) — a good old boy in a Stetson, who fronts a country and western band down the local bar.
He also must whip his motley bunch of blue-collar recruits into shape for a series of tests, which require them to outwit flames by digging firebreaks in dense forest and burning off. Among his charges is an ex-junkie on the brink of fatherhood (Miles Teller), who gets the nickname of Donut.
If life as a man means navigating a triangle of feisty women, male rivals and unforgiving nature, Eric is about as manly as a man gets.
His one-eyed dedication to his goals sees him through, though there are a couple of telling moments in the film where we glimpse some interesting vulnerability.
One is when his wife (Jennifer Connelly) confronts him late one night in their pick-up truck about having kids.
Her biological clock is ringing louder than a thousand fire alarms, but Eric's too busy to pay attention and the confrontation leaves him rattled.
The other is when an old timer confronts him over the positioning of a firebreak, and he has to decide whether to stand up to the tribal elder or go through with his unorthodox methods.
The outcome is never in doubt, but a flash of regret shows what a fine-grain actor Brolin can be.
You might have seen enough films about men locking horns, honing their warrior skills and causing their women grief — or maybe you'd just rather stay at home rewatching Top Gun — but it's not every day you get a movie on the big screen like this. The last one I recall was Sully, and though that was a much better film, Only The Brave deserves a look.
It's not a spoiler to tell you that the tale ends badly for some of the men — the "based on a true story" title card requires a certain amount of bloodletting.
Kocinski doesn't quite know how to bring the final act home, and in the rear-view mirror the film's tragic third act is slightly awkward and mistimed.
But Brolin's character in particular leaves an imprint.
Only The Brave is in large parts a jingoistic movie, but it also tries to understand what men run away from in life as much as run towards.
It's in no small part thanks to Connelly's white-hot exasperation in the pick-up truck scene that you're left so shell-shocked by the end.
For a film so unambiguously cheering for its heroes, it has an unsettling way of questioning the cost of their achievement.
Topics: arts-and-entertainment, film-movies, biography-film, action, united-states
First posted