Thrilling fire scenes and poignant drama. An excellent, entertaining film.

Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes (not counting closing credits)

Written by Lewis Colick (October Sky, Ghosts of Mississippi)
Directed by Jay Russell (Tuck Everlasting, My Dog Skip)

---CAST:
Joaquin Phoenix Jack Morrison
John Travolta Captain Kennedy
Jacinda Barrett Linda Morrison
Morris Chestnut Tommy Drake
Robert Patrick Lenny Richter
Jay Hernandez Keith Perez

This afternoon the market research company I work for held a screening at the Disney Screening Room for Ladder 49, and I’m really glad I went.

With a relatively simple story, Ladder 49 shows us the life and career of a firefirefighter as he grows from a cocky rookie to a family man, and how his life as a firefighter not only changes him, but how his life changes the way he comes to view being a firefighter.

Told in media res, the film opens with Jack Morrison (Phoenix) and his brother firefighters entering a large warehouse enveloped in flame. Before long, Jack is separated from his group, and trapped by collapsed floors and debris. As he waits for his coworkers to save him, he flashes back through his career, beginning with the day he first walked into Captain Kennedy’s (Travolta) firehouse. The movie intercuts various moments throughout Jack’s career with scenes of him trapped in that warehouse in the “present,” where his chances of rescue look bleak.

The movie avoids the tendency to glorify the lives of firefighters in purely heroic terms by illustrating the toll the life of a firefighter takes on him and his family. When Jack first meets Linda (Jacinda Barrett, of MTV’s The Real World London), the job of running into burning buildings to rescue trapped people is fascinating and sexy; the stuff great first dates are made of. But as Jack and Linda build a life together, the dangers inherent in his job become impossible to ignore, as he is forced to cope with the loss of fellow firefighters, and she is forced to endure the terrifying possibility of a red car pulling up to her door every night to tell her every wife’s worst nightmare. When his Captain asks him one night if he loves the job the way he did when he first started, one notices that Jack doesn’t give a direct answer, and when he asks in response if he’s saying that he should leave the firehouse, Kennedy answers that he thinks it’s a question Jack should be asking himself.

These are valid concerns, to which the movie does not pay mere lip service. We bond with the characters and experience their fears and their grief, largely because we get to see as much of the firefighters’ camaraderie and sense of family as we do of them fighting fire (though we see plenty of that too, and the firefighting scenes are excellently done). It’s probably no accident that there is little conflict among the firefighters (only Lenny, played by Robert Patrick, is at all antagonistic, and even then, not much); that they are all nice guys allows us to like them, and sympathize with them through their joys and their pains. The conflict, rather, is in the conflict inherent in those occupations that require people not only to take huge risks and sometimes make the ultimate sacrifice, but which require the same of their wives and loved ones as well. It is through the thrilling action sequences of buildings exploding in flame and the inevitable tragedies that result that the movie is able to successfully convey firefighting as an occupation that is both inescapably glorious and frightening. It is because these are all too-real concerns easily mirrored in real life, moreso now in a post-9/11 world than ever before, that the film is able, without a deeply convoluted story or extremely edgy plot twists, to elicit our emotions and hold our interest.

The plot is not a high-concept “what if.” It is merely about life. Specifically, it’s about the lives of those who are paid to give theirs to save ours.

*SPOILER*

While it is a good film, and well worth seeing, the ending was extremely predictable. As soon as the wife states that she fears and has nightmares about the red car pulling up to the house, it's pretty obvious that he's gonna bite-it in that building.

Having said that, it's still worth watching.