clearing brush and burning firelines relatively far from the danger itself. When we first meet these firefighters, they are no more than a municipal squad doing Type II fire mitigation duty, viz. These are men with real struggles and issues of their own, and in portraying these alongside their heroism, this well-rounded tribute becomes all the more compelling and poignant.
Oh no, as adapted for the screen from a harrowing GQ article by Ken Nolan ('Black Hawk Down') and Eric Warren Singer ('American Hustle'), it is a celebration of ordinary, sometimes- flawed men doing extraordinary things that pays homage to their indomitable courage and self-sacrifice, but never does turn reverent to the point of idolatry.
But this portrait of a fraternity of men who risk their lives day-in and day- out containing fast-spreading wildfires is much, much more than just that fateful incident alone. Here are the best firefighter movies available to watch now.The elite group of firefighters known as the Granite Mountain Hotshots came into national prominence because all but one of them perished in the deadly Yarnell Hill Fire of June 2013, thus marking the highest death toll for US firefighters since 9/11. There are hundreds of real harrowing stories to capture on film, which is maybe why the best firefighter movies so far have been documentaries. And it’s not like there’s a dearth of intellectual property. But both of these obstacles now seem easily surmounted. This inability might be due to practical concerns of filming real fire or-at least an excuse in the past-limited VFX capabilities for capturing digital flames. Cinema knows what firefighters may do but doesn’t always capture what they actually do.
In an interview with GQ, FDNY firefighter Gregory Shepherd summarized NBC’s Chicago Fire like this: “ had a good understanding of what we may do, but they added a little too much Hollywood.” The description seems widely applicable. Other times, like when you make a list of the best firefighter movies, you wonder what to actually put in-which movies are actually good, which movies do the genre justice.įor a career field with a glut of TV melodramas, firefighting remains one of those cinematic genres relatively unexploited by filmmakers for such a terrifying, deadly, and real phenomenon, Hollywood has been pretty crap at depicting it. Most times when you make a list of the best films of a particular genre, you struggle to decide which movies to leave out-which moves don’t quite make the cut.