![]() That shot is one of many expansively gorgeous compositions that Kosinski and cinematographer Claudio Miranda pull off in the film, keeping Only the Brave as visually striking as the director’s previous forays into the worlds of virtual reality gaming and post-apocalyptic scavenging. “Once you’ve got a small hard taste of the bitch at work, there’s only one thing you’ll be able to see - that’s fuel,” says Marsh to his boys as they survey a beautiful valley early in the film. The scenes of the men working calmly in remote woodlands as flames flare up around them are filled with dread, and the “let’s get on with it” demeanor that emanates from Marsh on down to every member of his crew makes them more heroic because of how simple they make it all seem. CG flames are always a tricky prospect due to their propensity to look incredibly cheesy, but Kosinski - whose two previous films also offered up marvelous visual effects - and his production team have obviously labored to blend the digital and real as seamlessly as possible. Firefighters simply try to put out the flames and save lives, and the film’s meat-and-potatoes approach reflects that.īut the movie is at its best when it’s about the Hotshots as they’re on the job, and it excels at showing them in training, bonding and, most terrifyingly, fighting fires (the movie, with the catastrophic Northern California conflagrations still raging, could not be more timely, sad to say). It helps that firefighters, in their own way, are the most “pure” of public servants: as honorable as they are and can be, police and military often operate in much morally ambiguous situations. The film is straightforward and earnest in a way that harkens back to a kind of old-fashioned Hollywood storytelling, but that makes Only the Brave stand out in an era where so much entertainment ranges from cynical to downright nihilistic (not that I’m complaining there is plenty to be cynical about these days). Each man is battling his own inner demons while also fighting fires (Marsh’s are symbolized by a recurring dream of a flaming bear running toward him, something he actually saw once), but one aspect of the film that seems more true-to-life and fresh than most is the fact that the personal never gets in the way of the professional while they’re in the field, just for the sake of creating drama. Marsh is dedicated to the job and determined to get his Prescott, Arizona-based crew certified as Hotshots, even as it takes a toll on his relationship with his wife Amanda (Jennifer Connelly) McDonough is a former junkie who is trying to stay clean and get himself on the straight and narrow so he can support the baby he just fathered out of wedlock. The story is told through the eyes of two men: crew superintendent Eric Marsh (Josh Brolin) and rookie member Brendan McDonough (Miles Teller). Hotshot crews are known for their extensive and rigorous physical training, their ability to get in and out of incredibly difficult and treacherous locations and their fire suppression tactics, all of which are examined in Kosinski’s gripping film (the Hotshots deal primarily in starting fires on their own that burn away enough land so there’s nothing left for the flames they’re fighting to consume). He’s helped, of course, by the tale itself: Only the Brave tells the true story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a squad of elite firefighters whose job was to battle wildfires.
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