Review of Only the Brave (2017) by Merlin O — 22 Oct 2017

There is some great cinematography in the film, particularly the scene in which the firefighters watch flaming trees plunge from a cliff and ignite the clouds in the valley below. The acting is solid, but the problem is that the screenplay is trite and full of manipulate plot clichés.

Rather than develop the characters through a fine-grained focus on the knowledge involved in firefighting, this film wallows in the kind of trite relationship and baby-related drama you can see in any number of banal dramas, comedies, and Hallmark movies-of-the week.

People who risk their lives to control forest fires are automatically sympathetic; there is no need to "humanize" them by showing that they are good, upstanding, procreating heterosexuals. It would have been far more interesting to take out all the predictable and dull scenes involving their out-of-work relationships and really zoom in on the specific techniques of firefighting beyond the very vague image of the art that you get in this lamentably saccharine melodrama.