HOW LONG IS THE MOVIE LADDER 49 MOVIE
The preview screening where I saw Ladder 49 was packed with real-life firefighters and toward the end of the film I thought, 'Why are we watching a fictional movie about fictional firefighters when real heroes with real stories are sitting all around us?' I wanted someone to shut off the projector and have each one get up and relate just one of their own stories. But perhaps seeing television documentaries and reading about the heroics of the firefighters involved in the 9/11 tragedy for the last three years has made the genuine supplant the fictional. Ladder 49 has a workmanlike, cumulative power, shaded and authoritative performances by Phoenix and Travolta and is certainly an earnest effort. Couldn't there have been one firefighter who secretly wanted a little bit of after-work male bonding with one of his cohorts, thereby adding some dramatic tension? As to be expected from a movie about a profession with such macho heterosexual traditions, gays and lesbians are not part of the equation (though, surprisingly, the movie does include a rather up-to-the-moment joke about gay marriage).
The contrast of Morrison's standard off-duty life (shown through scenes of domestic bliss and discord, drinking nights at the local tavern and family barbeques) with the adrenalin of heroics and flaming infernos (and they are terrifyingly dramatic and realistic) is part of the point, but when we finally arrive back at where we've begun with Jack the movie hasn't seemed to delve very deep for answers. Jack's story, however, is rather typical: he quickly bonds with his fellow firefighters, quietly becomes a hero, meets, dates and marries Linda, the girl of his dreams (Jacinda Barrett) and as their children grow up, they weather their share of problems and tragedies (friends are tragically killed in the line of duty, Linda becomes terrified that Jack is next, etc.). The movie attempts to examine that by presenting Morrison's story, told via flashbacks as he lies injured and trapped inside a burning building as his Captain, Mike Kennedy (John Travolta), orders his men to try and rescue him. 'You go into burning buildings when everyone's running out' Jack's girlfriend-soon-to-be-wife Linda says to him incredulously at one point but the irony of that doesn't occur to Jack or his fellow firefighters-they're too busy trying to save lives.īut the irony occurs to the audience (as it's supposed to) and throughout the rest of the movie I kept looking for clues to answer the unanswerable question why these guys risk their lives for total strangers. 'Slow but steady' also describes this movie in which Phoenix, who's especially good at portraying characters that have still waters running deep, gets a supreme example here. The slow but steady career of firefighter Jack Morrison, the fictional character at the center of Ladder 49, mirrors that of Joaquin Phoenix the actor who plays him.
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