You ever feel like sometimes knowing too much about a movie messes up your experience of watching it? I’m not talking about plot leaks, spoilers or Homer Simpson blurting out vital information out loud while leaving a screening of Empire Strikes Back – I’m talking about having your knowledge about what you think a movie is about skewing your expectations in advance and then being caught utterly unawares by what the film is actually about.
That’s kind of what happened when I came late to the party for Only The Brave, the 2017 offering from Joseph Kosinski who went on to give us the brain blowing, adrenaline fix of Top Gun: Maverick and F1. Telling the harrowing true story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, an elite crew of firefighters from Prescott, Arizona, I was expecting the man behind the visual feasts of Tron: Legacy, Oblivion and the other films I already mentioned to deliver the most intense, cinematic, firefighting experience since the likes of Backdraft – however, Kosinski had his sights set on other goals.
Eric Marsh is the superintendent of Fire and Rescue Crew 7, who has big plans for his team of well trained guys. While they’re the best around when it comes to sawing down foliage in order to starve the passage of raging wild fires, the fact that they lack certification to be anything other than just backup. This is especially annoying for Marsh as not only does he have a real talent for predicting which way a wildfire can spread, but if an inferno were to suddenly threaten their own home town of Prescott, they wouldn’t be allowed to fight it directly.
While Marsh’s passionate and equally fiery attitude certainly doesn’t do him any favours, fire chief and close friend Duane Steinbrink helps lobby the Mayor to push things along and while they await word, Crew 7 starts a recruitment drive to hire new members. Enter 21 year-old heroin addict, Brendan McDonough, who has decided to try and turn his life around after getting kicked out by his mother and discovers that his ex-girlfriend wants him to have nothing to do with her unborn child. After a rocky start that sees him targeted by wary crew member, Chris MacKenzie, Brendan slowly gains acceptance through hard work and determination, but as a real chance of certification rears its head, the crew starts to see how this life of heroism can steal away your time with loved ones.
But while Brandon is struggling to be a father with all the time spent fighting fires, Marsh is facing similar pressure from his wife, Amanda, who has realised that she wants to start a family.
But wildfires care not for such things and as the fire crew – now dubbed the Granite Mountain Hotshots – continue to be farmed out across the country to fight fires of various sizes. How long can you do such a dangerous job without a terrible toll being collected?
In many ways, the rather low score I’ve given Only The Brave could largely be attributed to issues related to my own expectations as the film I watched was certainly not the film I was expecting to get. Unfamiliar with the story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, I thought I was more in store for something closer to Deepwater Horizon or another true life story that been turned into a neo-disaster movie – however, what I got was more in keeping with Baltasar Kormákur’s far more sober Everest, that trades out cheaper thrills in the aim to make you feel the emotional weight that these were real people in real situations. However, despite all the good intentions in the world and a raft of solid performances, Only The Brave finds itself stuck somewhere between honoring the truth and trying to jazz up the fact that a lot of the running tome is just a lot of unfeasibly brave dudes just going about their day.
In fact, it probably would be more accurate to describe the film more as a straight drama as the fire fighting stuff is not only played completely straight, but turns out to be strangely univolving. Yes, the fact that these were real people with real lives should preclude the filmmakers from resorting to epic, melodramatic, Backdraft-esque action sequences in order to sex up the film, but on the other hand, I couldn’t help but be disappointed that Kosinski didn’t bring more of his visual side out to play. It’s not that the visuals are bland – on the contrary, the filmmaker manages to get some truly stunning vistas on film – but considering that this was the man who went on to revolutionise the way jets, race cars and speed in general is filmed, you’d think that he’d concoct some fiery setpieces that would sizzle your eyebrows through the screen. Instead, the constant sawing, chopping and burning of the ground proves to look genuinely dangerous, but strangely un-cinematic compared to other on-screen infernos.
Thankfully, the performances mostly make up the difference, even if a lot of the plot is either taken up with the guys bonding or Marsh and his wife having clashing outlooks. However, despite how solid Josh Brolin, Miles Teller and Jennifer Connolly are, a lot of the drama occasionally creeps into familiar cliché, especially when Brolin gets to pull out that trusty true disaster trope: the man who has put family on hold because saving lives is who he is. With that being said, Brolin manages to juggle Marsh’s combative, no bullshit attitude with arguably one of the manliest handlebar mustaches I’ve seen in quite some time, but it’s a shame that the story of a real life hero feels so overly familiar. Additionally, there’s an issue that unless your character is played by Miles Teller, Taylor Kitsch, or James Badge Dale, it’s increasing difficult to tell these men apart even before they all get covered in soot and grim and while Miles Teller’s Brendan has an honest to God redemption story to sink his molars into, it’s also curiously devoid of drama and it’s a similar problem that afflicted The Perfect Storm back in 2000. While the story is greatly moving on paper and genuine lives were lost, the lack of any real drama or incident before the final thirty minutes means you’re literally watching these people making time for nearly two hours before disaster rips everything to pieces. It feels weird making complaints about a film that’s bending over backwards to honor genuine lifesavers, but when your film contains Brolin, Teller, Connolly and Jeff Bridges as firefights and you’re still subconsciously looking at your watch, something has gone a little wrong.
Maybe if I was expecting more of a drama rather than a tense face-off between brotherhood and the elements, I might have been more on the wavelength that Only The Brave is putting out. But while the real life men honoured are undoubtedly worthy of a movie in their name, the film in question doesn’t do much beyond the norm.
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