Ladder 49: Movie, DVD, Blu-ray disc Review (2004)

(Originally published 2004)

The drama "Ladder 49" is about firefighters, and while it's not set in New York City and never mentions the terrorist attacks that took place there, it's impossible to view it without recalling those events.

The film’s opening shot, after all, is of a towering building whose top explodes in billowing clouds of fire and smoke. Inside are firemen fighting to free trapped civilians--and eventually themselves--when the building starts to collapse.

If that smells like opportunism to you, here's the thing. In spite of the fact that a great deal of the film's power is drawn from our collective memories of 9-11, there are other elements at work here that make "Ladder 49" a reasonably good, if predictable, meat-and-potatoes tearjerker.

As directed by Jay Russell from a script by Lewis Colick, the film is set in Baltimore, which is portrayed here as a close-knit community of working-class men and women who love each other almost as much as they love their pubs. It stars Joaquin Phoenix as Jack Morrison, the young firefighter whose life is viewed in flashback as he lays trapped and wounded in the aforementioned building.

While a team of firefighters works to save him, the film flips back and forth through Jack's life in an effort to give us an intimate portrait of the man.

Along the way, we meet Jack as a rookie firefighter, a proud husband to Linda (Jacinda Barrett), a father of two children and a friend to many.

Tension comes in two forms: the pressure of day-to-day life as a firefighter and how difficult it is for Jack to sustain his increasingly shaky marriage to Linda when he decides to assume more risks at the job.

Though Russell has stripped his movie of subtlety and a wealth of other movies ("The Towering Inferno," "Top Gun," "Backdraft," others) have trained us to expect what's to come, "Ladder 49" nevertheless manages to be consistently watchable.

Its strength is in its brisk, credible action and its appealing cast--particularly Phoenix and Barrett, who get the best out of each other onscreen, and John Travolta in the stock role of the concerned fire chief, Capt. Mike Kennedy. All get the job done in a movie that respects the job and the men it depicts.

Grade: B