The real Jeff Bridges, aging gracefully, plays the wise old division chief Duane Steinbrink. His grizzled machismo and best Jeff Bridges imitation securely in place, Josh Brolin plays the irascible-but-stalwart crew leader Eric Marsh. In short, these guys seem a whole lot smarter about smoothly combining firefighting with domestic life than their movie is. Of course, those afflict the leads the supporting characters are, for the most part, depicted as a group of hard-working young men happily ensconced in marriage and fatherhood. In the hands of director Joseph Kosinski, it's informative and exciting watching these guys at work, but something else is going to have to happen on-screen and in Only the Brave, that something else is often feeble: The federal recognition subplot is accompanied by a cliched redemption story and a minor marital drama.

Mainly, wildfire fighting deploys a team of men with shovels, chainsaws and flame throwers to clear a line of all vegetation to halt a fire's progress. There is something almost amusingly tangential about this plot line, as a movie supposedly concerned with life, death and natural disasters busies itself with the details of federal-municipal relations and funding formulas for emergency services.Īs they adapt the true-life story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots for the screen, writers Ken Nolan and Eric Warren Singer have a particular challenge: When it comes to battling forest fires before they encroach on towns, there are only so many fresh scenarios you can dream up. Only the Brave is a movie about municipal firefighters battling wild fires in Arizona and its first act is mainly concerned with whether this group will be accorded federal recognition as an elite 'hotshot' crew.

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