REVIEW: Josh Brolin stars in Only the Brave, a fitting tribute to real-life firefighting heroes

REVIEW: Only the Brave takes a true-life tragedy and thanks to honest-to-goodness storytelling, turns it into a blazing spectacle that’s also a fine salute to fallen firefighters

ONLY THE BRAVE (M)

***1/2

Director: Joseph Kosinksi

Starring: Josh Brolin, Jeff Bridges, Miles Teller

Verdict: Straight up drama

THIS up-close-and-personal account of a bunch of Arizona firefighters, aka hot shots, is as conventionally structured as any emergency worker’s manual.

But since it’s based on the true story, Only the Brave packs a surprisingly hefty emotional wallop.

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Taylor Kitsch (far left) in his best role since Friday Night Lights, with Ben Hardy, Ryan Jason Cook, Kevin Woyjeck and Ryan Busch in Only the Brave.

The climactic sequence, in which the trapped men cover themselves with protective sheets as the raging inferno rolls over them, leaves an impression on one’s retina long after the credits have rolled.

As does the recurring image of the burning bear encountered by Eric “Supe” Marsh (Josh Brolin) in an earlier firestorm.

And the scene in which the wives and children gather together, in a school gym, to await news of their loved ones, is all the more potent for its lack of dramatic embellishment.

Director Joseph Kosinksi’s fair dinkum approach suits the material well.

What Only the Brave lacks in dramatic inventiveness, it makes up for in honest-to-goodness storytelling.

The performance style is similarly straight-up (it’s hard to distinguish some of the photographs of the real firefighters in the end credits from the actor’s versions of them).

"Supe" Eric Marsh (Josh Brolin) stars in Only The Brave. Picture: Supplied

Brolin is rock-solid in the role of Marsh, a maverick fortysomething fire chief with a mysterious past.

Jennifer Connelly proves a good match in the role of his horse-whisperer wife, Amanda, patron saint of strays and lost causes.

Miles Teller chafes expertly against the role of Brendan McDonough, an addict to whom Marsh gives a second chance for reasons that will eventually become clear.

Australian actor Alex Russell (Goldstone) makes good use of his screen time as one of the would-be Granite Mountain Hotshots’ new recruits.

Taylor Kitsch turns in his best performance since Friday Night Lights as McDonough’s arch nemesis-turned-friend.

And Jeff Bridges, who worked with Kosinski on Tron: Legacy, adds some understated grit to the role of Marsh’s mate and mentor, Duane Steinbrink

Like any good tradesman, Konsinski takes his time setting up the foundations of his story.

The audience is oriented, along with the rookies, in the art of burning out, hotspotting, establishing control lines and cold trailing.

When the men become trapped, we know the emergency drill almost as well as they do.

The tension builds in inverse proportion to the speed as which the flames eat the undergrowth.

Only the Brave is a fitting tribute to the Granite Mountain Hotshots that never once stoops to mawkishness or sentimentality.

Only the Brave opens on Thursday (November 30).

Originally published as REVIEW: Josh Brolin stars in Only the Brave, a fitting tribute to real-life firefighting heroes