Backdraft (1991)
Directed by Ron Howard
Two feuding siblings carrying on a heroic family tradition as Chicago firefighters. But when a puzzling series of arson attacks is reported, they are forced to set aside their differences to solve the mystery surrounding these crimes.
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What critics compared Backdraft to
“Only the Brave” is the forest-fire equivalent of its urban cousin, 1991’s “Backdraft.”
Director Joseph Kosinski avoided many possibly pitfalls, such as making firefighters seem like superheroes in the manner of "Backdraft," hailing them as saints or dwelling on their deaths and the aftermath.
Joseph Kosinski’s Only the Brave blends the real-life story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots with the drama of fictional firefighter narratives like Backdraft and Ladder 49 to make what feels like Lone Survivor: Firefighter Edition.
I’ll admit, I haven’t seen any firefighter films since Backdraft, which was about a crew on the trail of a serial arsonist.
It’s also as gripping as Backdraft or an infinitely smarter The Towering Inferno.
Perhaps it is even reminiscent of a particular Ron Howard movie: Backdraft, Howard’s 1991 tribute to the heroism of big-city first-responders who rush toward disaster scenes while everyone else rushes away.
And, somehow, like Ron Howard’s firefighting drama Backdraft on speed.
The latter episode, and the dual focus on heroic work and goodhearted private lives will put some in mind of Ron Howard's populist firefighter drama "Backdraft."
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Jettisoning the moral tensions of his “Frontier Trilogy” to a fault, this is typical action-thriller fare that recalls the bygone era of Peter Weir’s Witness or Ron Howard’s Backdraft , and the film offers base thrills we’ve all seen time and time again; but where the story lacks in meat on its bones, it more than makes up for with its character work.
Ron Howard 's “Backdraft” is a movie half in love with fire, a film like “Fahrenheit 451” that finds something seductive in tendrils of smoke and boiling cauldrons of flame.
Life in his movies (including "Backdraft," "The Paper" and "Apollo 13") is a seamless, simplistic American pantomime.
Like "Backdraft" and "Far and Away," the hero has a couple watershed, tough-guy cries, and Gibson has certainly demonstrated that he's up to showing manly, vein-popping emotion.
While flirting with the darkness in features such as "Backdraft" and "Parenthood" (don't kid yourself, some severe psychological events unfold in that wonderful picture), "Ransom" introduced a maturity to Howard's directorial career, burrowing into a bleak tale of loss and improvised revenge, working from a screenplay co-written by Richard Price ("Sea of Love," "The Color of Money").
Although Howard has directed some big, brash Hollywood flicks in the past, such as 1991’s Backdraft, he shows a lot of class and maturity in not turning this into another blockbusting disaster flick.
Back in the ’90s, Howard brought us such white-knuckle spectacles as “Backdraft” and “Apollo 13.”
Howard, whose previous tales of men in professional peril include the topnotch “Apollo 13” as well as “Backdraft” and “Cinderella Man,” works with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle to create a style in the racing scenes that makes the most of every angle.
Apollo 13 , Rush ) don't get that way because they avoid that tendency, but because it works well in the context of the narrative.
What was that beautiful mind thinking, I wonder, when he committed to projects such as Gung Ho , Backdraft , EDtv (which foreshadowed the current reality craze but seriously blew anyway) and this one?
Directed by Ron Howard ("Inferno," "Rush," "The Da Vinci Code," "Cinderella Man," "Apollo 13," "Backdraft," "Willow," "Cocoon").
In 1994, he was the man who followed "Parenthood" and "Backdraft" with the ill-conceived Cruise/Kidman movie "Far and Away" and the god-awful "The Paper."
Ron Howard makes sunny films about dark subjects (firefighters in "Backdraft"), and his "Apollo 13" has little of the stinging social criticism of Tom Wolfe's and Phil Kaufman's "The Right Stuff" (1983).
Ron Howard's take on the ill-fated 1970 moon shot is a big step forward from his previous two films -- Backdraft and The Paper -- which seemed to get lost in a variety of non-user-friendly subplots and were generally muddled exercises in how an excellent filmmaker can get lost in his own story.
Howard's great problem as a filmmaker is that he's too good at making movies that are slick and hollow and commercial, which is harmless when he's cranking out action-adventure pablum like Ransom or The Da Vinci Code , except that he can't turn it off, and when he gets to making a movie that, to all appearances, he believes in - Cinderella Man or Backdraft or the infamous A Beautiful Mind - his stabs at pathos and emotional resonance typically feel horribly insincere, regardless of their sincerity.
Apollo 13 , Rush ) don't get that way because they avoid that tendency, but because it works well in the context of the narrative.
And then comes the can’t-help-it movie-geekiness that says, Hey, wasn’t Kurt a fireman in Backdraft?
Russell, who wrote the book on Poseidon’s brand of iconic hero in disaster movies like "Escape From New York" and "Backdraft," consummates one of the film’s most unsettling underwater scenes with an Oscar-quality virtuosic realization that galvanizes the movie as an instant classic.
Russell is the one time Mayor of New York (?) and, in what I can only assume is a nod to the much superior "Backdraft," a former fireman.
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More than most modern movies, it matches the waterborne claustrophobia of “The Abyss” and inescapable conflagrations of “Backdraft” – proudly draped in vestiges of a vintage practical-effects era.
Me reviewing Deepwater Horizon is like a pilot reviewing Sully, an astronaut reviewing Gravity, or a firefighter reviewing Backdraft.