Ladder 49

I n Ladder 49, Joaquin Phoenix stars as Jack Morrison, a firefighter trapped in a fire after the floor he's on collapses as he saves another man. As he lies injured and his comrades work to rescue him, his life as a firefighter unfolds as a series of flashbacks from his days as a rookie to 10-year veteran and family man. We see episodes of rookie hazing, his first fire, rescuing a couple of people, as well as the death of one good friend and the maiming of another.

As I was watching the movie, I couldn't help but feel how uncerebral the movie really is. While looking at the life of this firefighter, we never explore very deeply why he has followed the career path he has followed. We are just sort of shown what that path is, none the wiser about why. We hardly get into his or anybody else's heads. He mopes about the death of a friend, he clashes with his wife (woodenly played by Jacinda Barrett) but only barely since she barely shows any real strain of being married to someone who runs into buildings that other people are desperate to run out of.

There are decent performances by Phoenix and John Travolta and a few other actors, but they don't really carry the movie very far. The ending, unsurprisingly considering this comes after the 9/11 atrocity, is sort of a paean for firefighters everywhere and one of the few scenes with any significant emotional impact.

If you want to see a better movie about firefighters, even if it does revolve around a strange arson/murder plot, rent Backdraft. The action scenes are more spectacular, the texture of the movie's background is richer, and you even get into the firefighters' heads more in that movie than this one.

I will add that, fortuantely, the scene where the characters react to the 9/11 atrocity is cut and left as an extra on the DVD. The sentiments expressed in that scene are handled far more ham-handedly than in the ending of the movie. And I think the editors were well advised to steer clear of explicit references to that event.

Overall, I can't give the movie a rating higher than C+.