Their marriage is marked by Marsh's frequent, prolonged absence during the wildfire season.Īs the film begins the Prescott firefighters are angling on certification as the nation's first municipal team to be awarded elite status. The actor plays supervisor Eric Marsh, married to Amanda (Jennifer Connelly), a horse whisperer of sorts who nurses injured wild horses back to health. In 'Only the Brave' Brolin's real-life character is defined, and haunted, by images of a bear consumed in flames, charging the camera. Brolin’s Marsh is a guy with a bear belt buckle and bear figurines on his table who fights repeated dreams about a flaming bear.Movies in flames tend to click with an audience, because they feed the craving for escapist disaster ('In Old Chicago,' 'The Towering Inferno,' 'Backdraft') even as they remind us of what's happening right now, for real, and without the melodrama (in Northern California, for example). The film goes a little too far at times with the metaphors and imagery. (“It’s not easy sharing your man with a fire.”) Andie MacDowell is woefully underused as his wife, out of focus in the background in several shots, then given the worst lines. Jeff Bridges is less successful as a local fire official no one seemed to inform the legend he’s in a good movie. More than just another role for this popular star and Academy Award-nominee, Morita actually lived aspects of the real-life story that inspired this new motion picture. Steve Inskeep talks to Claudia Puig, president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, about Only the Brave, which dramatizes the story of elite firefighters and Lady Bird, a coming of age film. Amanda Marsh is given her own noble career in horse rescue, her own plot turns, along with her own dreams. Only The Brave Pat Morita It was an honor for everyone involved with ONLY THE BRAVE to work with the legendary Noriyuki Pat Morita in one of his very last films. In lesser disaster films, Connelly would howl most of her lines into a phone, forced into repetitive reaction shots in a kitchen or living room. Miles Teller as Brendan McDonough is a standout, beginning as a dead-eyed drug user, then gradually turning into a responsible adult.īut the strongest example of the writing can be seen in Marsh’s wife, played with dry humor and steel by Jennifer Connelly. There are no “Top Gun”-style one-note supporting players in “Only the Brave.” The character-building has an episodic television feel, with subtleties and quiet moments to counterpoint the fiery climaxes. “Come and get it!”) and moments of humor, while constantly adding layers to each of the leads. They combine muscular language (“You want a piece of me,” Marsh says to a fire. Categories Categories: Film Guide stubs 2017 films American films English-language films Biographical. Only the Brave View src History Talk (0) This article is missing significant information. A scene where the firefighters have done their job, and watch a diverted fire drop burning trees into a lake, is particularly lovely.Įxperienced screenwriters Ken Nolan (“Black Hawk Down”) and Eric Warren Singer (“American Hustle”) seem to understand the modern Western they’ve been charged with creating. The shift in editing over to pages for the movies, characters, actors, directors, composers.

And the audience feels each victory along with the protagonists. Human beings have rarely looked smaller on the big screen. Stopping an enormous, hard-charging, deadly natural force is a strategy game, requiring hard work and instinct. Then, once the audience feels caught up, Kosinski uses this new language to craft innovative action.

Only the brave movie characters