Canberrans are not strangers to the calamity that a firestorm can cause. The resultant loss of life and property changes lives enormously.
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Only the Brave puts the focus on Group 7, a remote wilderness fire fighting team stationed in Prescott, Arizona and led by Eric Marsh (Josh Brolin).
It is fire season in 2008 and Eric is preparing his team to become “hotshots”, the elite in the world of wilderness fire fighting.
The title immediately gives you a sense of what to expect. These men are heroes. The film undoubtedly was made to commemorate the exploits of the real life hotshot team from Granite Mountain.
Literally, these men face a trial by fire.
The film is a paean to the fire fighters who confront the fire demon face-to-face and risk everything to protect lives and homes.
Only the Brave deals with the essentials of survival and conflict. The forest fires are personified; they become breathing entities whose actions confront and challenge top echelon fighters such as Eric.
The fury of the fire also symbolises personal anguish the men face. In some cases, they use the fire to escape making decisions in their personal lives. Raging physical external forces mirror internal conflicts.
Eric gives new recruit Brendan (Miles Teller) a chance to join his fire crew, despite Brendan’s drug use and criminal record. This is paralleled by Eric’s wife, Amanda (Jennifer Connelly), who cares for wild and abused horses. You can see the unsubtle counterpart. Amanda and Eric both work with strays. Amanda wrangles horses; Eric wrangles people.
The fire crews are a tight knit men’s club. They say blokey things and strut in macho ways. They are also kind-hearted and would sacrifice anything for their mates. At one stage, one team member refers to them as being like John Wayne.
Without a doubt, the fire sequences convey a sense of what it is to confront a fire up-close and personal.
The film doesn’t reveal anything we don’t know about selfless sacrifices by fire fighters, and numerous other careers that place themselves and their families second to the well being of their community.
Only the Brave offers straightforward film conventions, characterisations and structures. It builds to an almighty conflagration that erupts into a tear-sodden conclusion.
It’s a tribute to these men who willingly put their lives at risk.
However, It doesn’t need an entire film to wave the flag in what is a conventional hyper-emotive treatment of heroic adventures.
