There’s even a possibility that the film’s first act is intentionally distancing so that the later scenes will have a bigger payoff. I won’t go so far as to say you’ll fall in love with these characters – other than Brolin and Teller I couldn’t tell any of them apart – but there is a sincere effort to get beneath the facade of what an extremely fit twentysomething firefighter’s life is like. Remarkably, though, the film does transition to a deeper understanding. Either way, prepare yourself for plenty of scenes cut to the music of AC/DC. As Donut intermingles with the others there’s plenty of “locker room talk” and general dick-swinging, which one can either interpret as accuracy in film-making or perpetuating a culture that encourages patriarchal thinking.
#ONLY THE BRAVE MOVIE PLUS#
Marsh gives him a chance, which means hazing from his new comrades plus a lot of pushups and personal responsibility. The rise of the Hotshots mirrors the redemption of Brendan McDonough AKA “Donut” (Miles Teller), a local drug abuser who gets his girlfriend pregnant and decides he’s got to change his life. There’s an awful lot of alpha male posturing, to the point that Marsh’s wife, horse trainer Amanda (Jennifer Connelly), accuses him of doing a “John Wayne thing” when he stares off into the distance instead of enjoying some time in the tub. It’s a little bit fascinating to watch the machinations of how they step up to hotshots, but also a little bit ridiculous. For they are the best! And everyone knows it! But politics and regulations and, I dunno, taxes get in the way. The regular army are Type 2s, or “Deucers”, and when we first meet Brolin and his gang they’ve been stuck as Deucers for too long. “Hotshot” isn’t just a nickname, it’s a term to describe a type of wildfire suppression expert. There’s a moment in this film in which Bridges cracks under duress for just an instant and emits a groan that is so heartbreaking, so true and yet so underrepresented in movies that it all but washes away much of the boilerplate machismo of the film’s first half. Jeff Bridges plays an Arizona emergency services supervisor (exact position is a little vague) and godfather figure to Eric Marsh (Josh Brolin) and his guardians of the range, the Granite Mountain Hotshots. But when you’ve got as keen an eye as he does, plus a cache of tough guy performers facing impossible odds, it is extremely effective.
#ONLY THE BRAVE MOVIE MOVIE#
Much of the movie is as blunt as the title suggests, and Kosinski leans into it in the third act. Only the Brave follows the same pattern (“What’s it like to be an elite wildfire squad?”) and only if you know that it’s based on a true story do you realise it isn’t going to end so well.
It’s really more of a procedural film – “What’s it like to work at an airport?” – with political dealings, romantic woes, a comic side plot and finally some explosives thrown in at the end.
This unpredictable quality to Only the Brave ends up being its greatest strength.Ī point of comparison would be the 1970 film Airport, which, thanks to its many sequels, suggest wall-to-wall disaster tension to those who haven’t seen it. Furthermore, the “hangin’ out” sequences with the Granite Mountain Hotshots don’t exactly feel cut from a Richard Linklater film, but it’s in a similar ballpark. This isn’t to imply the sequences of mighty conflagrations aren’t heart-pounding, it’s just that there are fewer than you might expect.
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