Only The Brave review

 
I first heard about director Joseph Kosinski back in 2010 when Tron Legacy came out. It was a visually mesmerizing movie, I was a fan of Tron and was anticipating the sequel. I didn’t think much about the director as I was caught in the world that was created. He caught my attention once again in 2013 when he directed Oblivion. This was another that was just visually gorgeous to look at, and while the story wasn’t anything new, it was still compelling enough to grab my attention for a couple of hours and to suck me in, and it did have a couple of solid twists, well one really big one in particular that threw me off. Not only were these movies visually cool, but they had great soundtracks to go with them. Seriously the two soundtracks to these movies are still worth listening to today. At that point, I felt that I had the director figured out, he could create visually stunning movies that were very cool to look at and probably had great scores to go with them, and would more likely be Science Fiction movies, but story or emotion wise, probably wouldn’t do anything beyond that. Now before I move on, don’t get me wrong, if you read any of my previous reviews, I really like visually cool looking movies, and I really like going to those a lot. Anyway, I first heard about the movie around August when a trailer was attached before The Dark Tower. I remember seeing Joseph Kosinki’s name attached as the director, I realized I didn’t think I saw him direct another movie since Oblivion, and right then and there I knew I would go check it out, besides the fact that the movie had a solid cast and that it looked like a solid movie.

I kept my eye out for it, I knew when it would arrive and I planned to go see it. I heard good reviews out of this and so I was definitely going in with hopes that this would be really good, and it was. This was a very good movie. What surprised me was that not only did this movie have quite a few really gorgeous shots, but it had a really solid story and it actually had emotions, I nearly teared up by the end, I got emotional. I found myself really caring about the characters and the situation. This movie also brought an appreciation of something I don’t express enough gratitude for, firefighters. I haven’t been in a burning building (thankfully), and I don’t think of them a whole lot, but this movie re-introduced that appreciation for them, and how they are truly real life heroes. Not only that, but it really goes into the difficulty of being a firefighter, and how that can affect their personal and family lives. 

 

There are two main characters that we get to see into their home lives, the chracters played by Josh Brolin and Miles Teller. We get glimpses of Josh Brolin and Jennifer Connolly’s family life and how they make their difficult schedule work but also how it goes into those frustrations when one of them wants more out of the relationship. Miles Teller’s character has an incredible growth throughout the movie and there are moments where you see his character struggle with the responsibilities he has taken on him and how it begins to affect his family life at one point. All the other performances are excellent, and we have a great set of actors portraying their characters wonderfully. In case you didn’t know, this was based on a true story, I didn’t know about the facts of this story going in, this is another movie that I chose to not look up facts until after the movie, another one I did that was Everest two years ago (which surprisingly also starred Josh Brolin). Seriously, a director I had personally categorized and he has gone beyond what I expected.

The visual effects of the movie were very well done, it’s a compliment when you can’t tell if there was any CG work done or not, and a lot of the shots I could not tell if there was any sort of CG work, there were a couple I thought I could but there weren’t very many. I want to touch on another aspect (since I brought it up with the director’s previous movies) that I also really enjoyed, and it was the music. The composer was Joseph Trapanese, who was the composer for Oblivion and also the underrated animated TV show, Tron Uprising. It wasn’t a score that would blow doors down but just helped to set the mood for the story and doesn’t overpower the movie but helps to support it. I have listened to the score off Spotify while at work and it is a very nice listen and very calming. The songs chosen in the movie are also very good. 

I have thought about this movie since I saw it. How much we don’t really give them the credit they really deserve, they can be seen as unappreciated heroes until they are involved in saving our lives. Like I said I am thankful I haven’t been placed in that situation of being in a burning building and having to be rescued, nor do I want to be placed in one, I am just thankful to have movies like this that I can see and appreciate the people that are willing to give their time and efforts to do something that I wouldn’t want to do. I think the last movie we got about firefighters before this was Ladder 49 (which was pretty good if my memory serves me right), and that was 13 years ago. I hope we can take time to really give thanks to these individuals. As I was watching the movie, I was caught by how complex a lot of the techniques were to putting out or stopping a fire from spreading. I always thought it was about driving a fire truck from point A to point B to take a bunch of water and put out the fire. If I decided to go over to the fire station and state I want to be a firefighter, I would not have the proper knowledge to handle it. More importantly, I couldn’t go from a city to the mountains and expect to know how to properly deal with the fire in the mountain from spreading. As I stated earlier, the last firefighter movie I saw before this was Ladder 49 thirteen years ago, and that dealt with firefighters in a large city, this movie deals with containing fires in the mountains of Arizona, and the techniques were definitely different.

I am going to stop there, I really hope you consider checking out this movie for yourself, this is something that is definitely worth seeing in theaters.