Locals brave enough to watch this bio-pic of the Arizona “Hot Shots” firefighting crew can learn a great deal about how we puny little humans fight a monstrous firestorm. One thing that stands out, is the contrast between those who fight rural wild-land fires and those who confront urban structural fires. The tactics, skills, techniques and equipment are quite different. Which is part of the reason the response to our local “once in 150 years catastrophe” is so unique.
In Only the Brave, the Prescott, Arizona fire crew are the “Trainees” striving to become “Hot Shots.” The men are capable, but have spent the last four years assigned to “mop-up” jobs and therefore don’t get the frontline experience they need to go up a grade. Eric (Josh Brolin) supervises his team and has such an affinity with wildfires that he talks to them (although we never hear the fire responding). When his horse-rescuer wife, Amanda (Jennifer Connelly), insists she wants a baby, Eric shares a dream-like story about a bear running from a wildfire with his fur blazing—which pretty much shuts down any baby-making opportunity.
The pitch for this film could have been “The Perfect Storm with firefighters.” Just like they knew the fishing boat would sink and everyone would die, this time the audience already knows what happened to 19 of the 20 men who were the Granite Mountain Hotshots. We are introduced to the members of the crew and watch them interacting with their families, girlfriends and drinking buddies before heading off to danger. Since it is the start of the fire season, the crew needs some new recruits including Wade (Ben Hardy), whose father is Fire Chief in a medium-sized city, and Brendan (Miles Teller), the three-months-clean-and-sober ex-con who is still on probation for grand larceny. Hiring Brendan challenges the bragging, serial womanizer Chris (Taylor Kitsch), who likes to show off iPhone snapshots of his nude, heavily tattooed girlfriend. The wise old Division Chief, Duane is lovingly played by Jeff Bridges who steals every scene he is in—even singing onstage in the film with the real-life Duane’s country-cowboy band, The Rusty Pistols.
Ken Nolan and Eric Warren Singer’s script, and Joseph Kosinski’s direction, allows the training and indoctrination of the newbies to provide the exposition essential for the audience to understand the complexities of battling a wildfire. We learn about digging lines, back-burns, drop-torches, and the relative safety of black zones (already burned areas). On the first day, Eric has his crew take time to admire the forested vista that makes a wilderness so beautiful. “That’s the last time you will ever see it like this,” he tells them “From now on, it’s just premium-grade fuel.” Also important is the “blanket drill” where the crew unpacks protective fire-proof covers and pulls them over and around their bodies as they lay flat on the ground. “32 seconds,” Duane says after one of the drills. “That’s pretty good.”
The Oscar-winning, Life of Pi cinematographer Claudio Miranda vividly brings the beautiful destruction of five different wildfires to life in such a way that you can smell the smoke and feel the heat.
Of course the smoke smell really comes from the ashes and still-burning fires in our community. Which made me wonder who they might be cast in a film about the real-life heroes of the most destructive fire in California history? Best Actor Oscar-winner, and Farmers Insurance spokesperson J.K. Simmons would be perfect as Sonoma County’s acting Sheriff Robert Giordano, while Hurt Locker Oscar-winner Jeremy Renner could play Santa Rosa Mayor Chris Coursey. And for the elusive Donny Riveras—the stranger who awakened high school math teacher Anna Solano and several of her Coffey Park neighbors in time to escape the flames that destroyed their homes? Based on the eyebrows in the security video images, Noah Centineo is Riveras’ double.
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