‘Only the Brave’ has many fires to put out
“Only the Brave” tells the tragic true story of 19 firefighters who died in a deadly 2013 Arizona wildfire.
Director Joseph Kosinski (“Tron: Legacy”) begins years before the tragedy, the better to introduce key players and explain the mechanics and intricacies of firefighting, funding and comradeship.
Josh Brolin’s Eric Marsh is the local fire chief, a demanding, competitive and protective leader. He’s chafing to move up his team’s certification so that they can be “hotshots,” men whose training and expertise always put them on the first line of firefighting.
Marsh enlists a local power broker and retired fire chief (Jeff Bridges) to move things along.
As he badgers, provokes and inspires his squad, Marsh unexpectedly adds Brendan McDonough (Miles Teller), a boozy, druggy screw-up who unexpectedly has fathered a child and determines to change his life.
“Brave” captures the raging infernos that put these heroes literally in the line of fire, capturing them in their grandeur.
Watching feels horribly current after seeing California burn nightly on the news.
“Brave” schematically alternates between the firefighters who soon become The Granite Mountain Hotshots and the private affairs of Marsh, his veterinarian wife, Amanda (a strident Jennifer Connelly), and rehabilitated “Donut” McDonough.
Despite the filmmakers’ best intentions, “Only the Brave,” which is expanded from former Boston Herald reporter Sean Flynn’s GQ article, emerges as inert drama as we ever so slowly journey to that awful end.
The Marsh marriage is more complicated than it initially seems, Donut’s travails soon disappear, yet each domestic interlude seems alternately awkward and corny.
Equally frustrating is the climactic fire’s depiction. What happened exactly for the hotshots to become trapped without even a plane able to dump water to aid them or why their emergency shells failed to protect them is never clear.
As a cinematic attempt to bring a headline to life, “Only the Brave” lacks the insight of the Boston Marathon movies, “Stronger” and “Patriots Day.”