Only the Brave: Kosinksi’s Irony-Free Ode to Heroic Firefighters
It’s been four years since Joseph Kosinski, the architecture-major-turned-filmmaker who brought the flawed, but visually spectacular, TRON: Legacy and Oblivion, to multiplexes, last directed a feature-length film. Or to be more accurate, three years since he last made a film given that he spent the better part of the last twelve months making Only the Brave (formerly “Granite Mountain”), the latest “based on a true story” ode to tragic American masculinity (Peter Berg was busy making Deepwater Horizon and Patriot’s Day back-to-back). For all of his obvious skills and uncommon talent as a visual storyteller, Kosinski’s first two films were short on character depth and emotional engagement, but whether a function of Kosinski’s innate preferences for spectacle over substance or simply script-related issues, Kosinski’s feature-film output made him an odd, left-of-field choice to direct a film about American firefighters and the Yarnell Hill Fire of 2013 that resulted in the greatest loss of firefighters since 9–11 more than a decade earlier.
Only the Brave centers on two characters, Eric Marsh (Josh Brolin), a seen-it-all, done-it-all, middle-aged firefighter who leads a soon-to-be-elite crew of firefighters, and Brendan McDonough (Miles Teller), a down-on-his-luck, borderline loser without a future and an infant daughter on the way. For Marsh, there’s barely enough space in his firefighting life for his long-suffering, long-neglected wife, Amanda Marsh (Jennifer Connelly), a horse trainer. In scenes interwoven into adrenalized action scenes involving Marsh’s firefighting crew in action, Marsh and his wife spar, reconcile, and spar again over the dangers of his firefighting life, the days, weeks, and months Marsh spends away from home fighting fires in their native Arizona and elsewhere (crews travel out of state as needed), and Amanda’s desire to start a family before the biological clock runs out on them both. Their relationship has a standard, familiar arc, but it’s repeatedly elevated by Brolin and Connelly’s irony-free commitment to performances and roles that treat their real-life counterparts with respect and reverence.
McDonough’s arc from zero to hero is no less familiar, but again, Teller’s commitment to fully realizing that arc helps to dispel the feeling of déjà vu that moviegoers will experience as they watch McDonough’s story unfold. The McDonough we meet in the first scene, an out-of-shape stoner who stumbles into Firefighter HQ desperate for a second chance, quickly runs afoul of the other firefighters, becoming the object of derision and ridicule, especially from alpha-male wannabe Christopher MacKenzie (Taylor Kitsch). MacKenzie rightly perceives McDonough as the weak link who could get him and the other firefighters killed, but MacKenzie isn’t a typical or generic antagonist or villain. McDonough gradually wins over MacKenzie, initially by saving him from a tight spot during one of their early forays into fighting wildfires, later when offers MacKenzie a place to crash after MacKenzie becomes temporarily homeless.
That sense of mutuality, of reciprocity, becomes the life lesson McDonough learns through hard work, perseverance, and Marsh’s tough love approach to mentoring McDonough. Only the Brave mirrors Marsh’s surrogate father-son relationship with one between Marsh and an older, retired firefighter, Duane Steinbrink (Jeff Bridges). Steinbrink plays mentor, life coach, and family therapist to Marsh and his wife. Steinbrink also proves instrumental in helping Marsh and his crew receive coveted “Hot Shots” certification from the federal government. Once certified, Marsh and his crew can fight wildfires on the front line. With certification for Marsh and his crew (newly dubbed the “Granite Mountain Hot Shots”) come greater pay, but also increased risk given the crew’s proximity to wildfires and the destructive chaos wildfires represent. Based on Sean Flynn’s GQ article, “No Exit,” Ken Nolan and Eric Warren Singer’s solidly crafted screenplay for Only the Brave leans hard on genre tropes — specifically the war genre and the camaraderie among men fighting for a common cause and against a common, if abstract, enemy — but they also add just enough variation and unpredictability to character behavior and character interactions to keep audience interest at relatively high levels. Even when a mystical, philosophical Marsh gazes intently at an approaching wildfire or talks about its inherent terrible beauty, Only the Brave manages to stay on the right side of the cliché/non-cliché divide.
Not surprisingly, Kosinski brings his highly developed visual aesthetic to the wildfire scenes. Merging practical and digital effects into a seamless whole, Kosinski takes moviegoers as close as they’re likely to get to a firefighter’s experience without being there physically. Like Marsh, Kosinski repeatedly finds the terrible beauty in the wildfires that sweep through forests, using trees and brush as fuel. A recurring image of a bear literally on fire, however, can’t carry the metaphorical or thematic weight Kosinski and his screenwriters obviously intended. Besides looking unfinished (singular among Only the Brave’s visual effects), the bear-on-fire image feels like a filmmaker’s reach exceeding his grasp. A scene involving Marsh and his crew relaxing at the edge of a cliff as they watch a wildfire burning itself out on the edge of a nearby mountain works far better to accurately convey the wonder, awe, and (potential) terror of a wildfire.
