Staring Into The Eyes Of The Beast

It’s a matter of strange timing for the release of a movie. With forest fires wrecking havoc in California, a new film about those who choose to go out and fight them has hit theatres. Only The Brave tells the tale of a group of fire fighters who went out and fought a forest fire in Arizona in 2013. Directed by Joseph Kosinski (Tron Legacy and Oblivion), the film follows them as they face the beast. A harrowing, powerful story unfolds, one that makes you appreciate the hazards and difficulties of the job.

Eric Marsh (Josh Brolin) is the head of a crew of forest fire fighters in Arizona, eager to get his team’s rating raised and having them on the front lines. They include familiar faces- Taylor Kitsch, James Badge Dale, and Miles Teller, the last of whom is playing a newcomer, Brendan McDonough, who’s trying to get past problems of his own in a new line of work. Marsh has his own preoccupations, his wife Amanda (Jennifer Connelly) wants to start a family, and he spends most of his time working in a hazardous line of work. His crew is called out to work on a fire out in the countryside, a wildfire that quickly grows dangerous.

Much of the filming was done on locations in New Mexico, with a common enough terrain to double for the original areas. The source material for the film is the true story, as recounted in a GQ article by Sean Flynn. Ken Nolan and Eric Warren Singer crafted the screenplay out of that, and the film was placed in the hands of Kosinski, who thus far has the two films to his credit. I liked Tron Legacy, while Oblivion suffered from the presence of its lead actor. That said, the director has already shown skill with sprawling films and special effects, and in this film, he shows a gift for characterization.

With twenty members of a crew, it’s inevitable that some characters get more exposure than others through the story. We get to know these fire fighters in some capacity before they get sent into the hazards of the job, and Kosinski takes time to see things through their perspective, the challenges of their job, and their lives before throwing them into the proverbial inferno. The result is seeing the ferocity of a fire from the point of view of a group of determined, stubborn men. And Kosinksi and his crew convey that ferocity effectively in a combination of practical and CGI effects that blend together. We feel like the fire is coming in on us.

I looked around beforehand for other movies on forest fires. There have been a few, but no real stand outs. Some have woven the notion of a human antagonist into the story, but that’s not the case here. The antagonist of Only The Brave is the fire: it eats, breathes, and destroys, relentless and without remorse. The story follows these fire fighters we’ve gotten to know as they confront the monster, and as things move along, it’s heart wrenching, thrilling, and emotional.

The cast were all well chosen for their roles. They seem to capture the sense of esprit de corps and professionalism and toughness that you would expect out of the real deal. Some of the actors get more to do as things unfold, while others are more sketchily developed. Jennifer Connelly is sympathetic as Amanda, hopeful for the future when we first meet her, worrying about her husband as events unfold. She knows what she signed on for when she got involved with Marsh in the first place, and their relationship reflects a dilemma- a marriage where one of the partners is torn between life and duty. There’s a similar perspective in Andie Macdowell’s character Marvel, whose husband isn’t part of Marsh’s crew, but instead his mentor, a veteran of the job who’s faced his own dangers. Marvel’s spent years worrying about her husband when he’s gone out on a job, so she can relate.

James Badge Dale has had a good number of character roles down through the years, on television and in film, and here he gets one more. Jesse Steed is a tough, capable, resourceful fire fighter, one who’s been doing the job for awhile and understands its demands as he and the crew shift to front line duty. The same applies to Taylor Kitsch, playing Chris Mackenzie, another veteran of the work. He gives the character a stubborn, tenacious quality in his performance. Miles Teller, whose last film role I saw was in Fantastic Four (and which was not his fault for how it didn’t work) is the rookie to the crew as Brendan. The character when we meet him is trying to start over after many problems in his life, and he becomes a point of view character, taking on a new job and being astonished by the ferocity of what he encounters.

Jeff Bridges gets a good character role, one in a long line of them, as Duane Steinbrink, a mentor to Marsh who’s outside the immediacy of Marsh’s crew and in a supervisory role. He’s a veteran of the job who’s learned a lot through decades of fighting fires and sheer grunt work, and dispenses the wisdom of what he’s learned. Bridges gives the character a strong sense of authenticity, weight, and gravity in how he plays him. As is so often the case with Bridges, you could watch him read the phone book and he’d make it interesting.

Josh Brolin has the central role as Marsh, and brings a sense of strength and leadership in how he plays the character. He’s a bit preoccupied at first, but doesn’t carry that into the field, instead conveying the air of a man who’s calm under pressure, steady in the face of danger, and exactly the sort whose lead you would want to follow. The actor adds gruffness and a dash of eccentricity to the role, personalizing the fire in a way that you expect might be the case among others in the job. Brolin gives Marsh a core of tenacity and resourcefulness that was no doubt common to the real man, bringing humanity to the role as he goes along.

Only The Brave is definitely powerful, the best film about fire fighters since Backdraft. It tells a wrenching, heart stopping tale, and deftly weaves the story of men who go out to fight a merciless enemy despite the risks with the kind of effects that bring that enemy to vivid life. This is not a film for someone who has a deep fear of fire. Nor is it the sort of film that uplifts. It is, however, an intense character study about those who take these risks and go out into the inferno. I found it compelling and impressive- and I wonder how it might play out in those areas that have been affected by fires as of late. This is the sort of film that deserves attention at Oscar time.

An Exercise In Stupidity

Saturday was an evening of contrasts. On the one hand, here on Parliament Hill, we had the final evening of three nights of what's called Fortissimo, a military marching beat retreat ceremony. A group of marching bands plays music across the large lawn on the Hill, with a combination of brass instruments, bagpipes, and drums. Accompanying all of this are foot soldiers, cannons, horses, and the bells of the Peace Tower. Everything's done with such precision and skill, and it's the sort of ceremony that you should see, if you get a chance to attend one of these ceremonies. The central part of the evening is an arrangement of the 1812 Overture. It was a pleasant evening, and a fun one. The crowd enjoyed it.

Then I got home, and lo and behold, stupidity personified lurked on television.

Every once in awhile a film comes along that lowers the bar for monumental stupidity. There's a piece of cinematic refuse out there called The Room, a film often called the worst film of all time, which has no sense of consistency, logic, storytelling, or characterization. It was directed, written, and produced by one man, who also starred in it, a guy who looks like Ozzie Osbourne's dumber, uglier brother, a chap by the name of Tommy Wiseau. It's been called the Citizen Kane of bad movies. A rep theatre near my home runs it once a month, for some inexplicable reason.

I tend to avoid what obviously looks like a stupid movie when they turn up in the theatres. I might pick up a DVD if I see it on a library express shelf, but I won't waste dollars on it. Hence I've seen something like Battleship, which represents a couple of hours I'll never get back. That film saw Liam Neeson wasting his time, Taylor Kitsch playing a complete screwup Navy officer who somehow manages to step up at the last minute and become a commander, and Rihanna prove decisively that she's a horrible actress. Oh, and lest we forget, we're supposed to accept that an advanced aggressive alien race with Transformers technology wants to engage in naval war like a game. And the final act features the mothballed USS Missouri saving the day, commanded by Officer Screwup and manned by retired veterans. It's a sequence so stupid that it's a disgrace to the real Missouri. Of course, that fits in with the rest of the film.

Syfy in the States is a channel we fortunately don't have on this side of the border, though some of its movies turn up on our cable too. It has a policy of making profoundly cheesy films with horrible special effects, actors who pretty much need to take any role they can get, and shoddy writing and directing. Recently they came out with Sharknado, a film of such tacky stupidity that of course it went viral. The audience is supposed to believe that a tornado could scoop up sharks out of the ocean and onto L.A., wrecking havoc with civilians, particularly some characters played by actors desperate for a paying gig. I had managed to avoid it.

Last week, Discovery had its annual Shark Week. The channel here is much like the one south of the border,   with some Canadian content, but sure enough, plenty of shark related material. I'd use the word documentary, but Discovery has really set the bar low for the term documentary. It's mostly what we call Shark Porn (no, not sharks copulating, though it wouldn't surprise me). By Shark Porn, I mean rapid fire editing of sharks swimming through the water, chewing up whatever, banging into shark cages, baring their big teeth (side note to the editors at Discovery Channel: rapid fire editing is visual clutter. You people are idiots). And this goes on all week.

Well, the other night, to finish off the week, our Discovery Channel aired Sharknado. I was home late, but it started late as it was. I was watching something else, flipped channels during a commercial, and found this embarrassingly bad program going on. It didn't take long to realize... Ian Ziering turning up on screen confirmed it. I didn't linger to watch... just momentary looks during commercials was enough to leave me rolling my eyes. Horribly wooden acting, bad script, and a complete inconsistency in the story. One moment you'd have clear rain. The next moment, dry and somewhat sunny. And very confused characters trying to avoid falling sharks. All while trying not to look right at the camera and apologize for the bad effects and story.

I did see the end, which had my eye rolling going on hyperdrive. We're supposed to accept that a woman can be swallowed whole by a shark in mid air and survive the crash to earth (to be rescued a few minutes later). We're supposed to accept that an animal like a shark, caught up in the air in the heart of a tornado, would still be alive long enough to fall to earth (as opposed to being dead of massive trauma). Come on! If the shark found itself falling to earth, thrown out of a tornado, I'm more inclined to think it might be thinking something like this:

"I'm falling! I'm falling! I don't want to die! Oh, great Shark-Ra! By The Sacred Sharp Teeth, I pray thee, save your loyal servant from falling into the..." SPLAT!!!!!!

As opposed to, oh, hitting the ground, attacking a human, and getting in one more bite before their deaths. And seriously, are we supposed to expect that a guy with a chainsaw could cut his way out of a shark's body (and save the aforementioned woman who got swallowed whole)?

Ian Ziering, who years ago started out on Beverly Hills 90210, looked in the scenes I saw as if he was thinking, "You know, I wonder if I had never taken that role in the first place, if I might have had a chance to slowly build an acting resume of character roles, instead of spending years living down being a star of that show, not getting cast in anything, and being forced to star in a piece of dreck called Sharknado. Who knows? Maybe I could have been in Breaking Bad if I had passed on Steve Sanders. Damn, I hate my life..."

And of course, Syfy is already making a sequel to this stupidity. So more actors desperate for any part will feature prominently, more lapses in common sense will ensue, and more horrible writing and directing will result. And since such production companies have never heard of doing too much of a bad thing, expect even more stupidity to come. Perhaps like some of the following?