Only the Brave is the latest from Joseph Kosinski, the architect turned director behind such emotionally closed yet visually stunning films as Tron: Legacy and Oblivion. It’s about firefighters in the American south-west, and this may lead you to think this will be a movie with flat characters but loads of thrilling special effects. It’s actually a bit of the reverse.
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. 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 unpredictable quality to Only the Brave ends up being its greatest strength.
A 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. 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. 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.
Much of the movie is as blunt as the title suggests, and Kosinski leans into it in the third act. 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. 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. 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.
“Hotshot” isn’t just a nickname, it’s a term to describe a type of wildfire suppression expert. They’re the marines, basically. 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. For they are the best! And everyone knows it! But politics and regulations and, I dunno, taxes get in the way. It’s a little bit fascinating to watch the machinations of how they step up to hotshots, but also a little bit ridiculous. 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.
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. Marsh gives him a chance, which means hazing from his new comrades plus a lot of pushups and personal responsibility. 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. Either way, prepare yourself for plenty of scenes cut to the music of AC/DC.
Remarkably, though, the film does transition to a deeper understanding. 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. There’s even a possibility that the film’s first act is intentionally distancing so that the later scenes will have a bigger payoff.
The firefighting sequences evoke classic war films, as do the moments when the team returns “home from the line”. Marsh and Amanda have a blow-out that you can see coming from the first scene, but the specifics of it are detailed enough that you can’t just shrug it off. It is undeniably corny to see Josh Brolin gaze out at a cloud of smoke and mumble “what are you up to?” and his big speech to new recruits that “all this is fuel” is a bit much, too. But when the speeches end and the non-verbal acting begins, Only The Brave leaves a mark.
- Only the Brave is released in US cinemas on 20 October and in the UK on 10 November
