While Sept. 11 helped embellish the already heroic image of firefighters, "Ladder 49" doesn't owe any direct debt to such recent events. It plays, rather, like an old-fashioned, by-the-numbers drama ...
After watching “Ladder 49,” you will never complain about moving to the side of the road to make room for a fire truck. The new movie is the most polished of recruiting films. But that doesn’t mean it ...
In the film, Joaquin stars as Jack Morrison, a fireman who begins to reassess the physical toll and low pay his high-risk job requires due to his wife and kids. Despite the encouragement of his mentor ...
DETROIT -- John Travolta can't see the hand before his face, but he can feel the heat. He thinks he hears someone to his right, though it could just be a voice bouncing off a wall. He gropes in front ...
Paying tribute to some of America’s bravest, the firefighter film “Ladder 49” (search) starring John Travolta and Joaquin Phoenix could heat up the screen at theaters this weekend. But it’s just as ...
"Ladder 49" has just one aspiration behind it - to be a celebration of firefighters. This is good and bad. No movie in recent years, at least in this decade, has so convincingly conveyed what it's ...
Firefighting would seem to be a naturally cinematic subject. Indeed, one of the earliest narrative films was Edwin S. Porter’s six-minute documentary, “The Life of an American Fireman” (1903).
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. They are willing to lay their time, energy and lives on the line to protect the property and ...
One of the most enduring images in the weeks and months after Sept. 11, 2001, centered on the cleanup at the wreckage of the World Trade Center towers at Ground Zero. As the tons of debris were ...
The problem with this film is that it's hardly a film, more an extended promo for the American firemen. And any advertisement stretching on for two hours will always be a bit too hard to take. Of ...
It's loud. It's noisy. It's downright cacophonous. That being the case, I'm led to wonder if turning up the volume is a director's ploy to draw an audience's attention away from corny melodrama. Is ...