His strung-out scenes make an odd sort of interruption from the buddy-buddy bonding seen between the professionals, until we realize that McDonough intends to straighten up by joining the Prescott Wildland Fire team. While the firefighters are off fighting fires, local screw-up Brendan McDonough (Teller) is getting high and getting arrested. An early scene, in which the lead crews ignore Marsh’s prediction that the massive Cave Creek Complex Wildfire would turn and consume a nearby residential area, tragically illustrates why this gruff alpha personality ought to be leading the fight, rather than doing clean-up duty behind hotshots - although in 2005, no municipal handcrew had ever been certified as such. The film begins at a point when Marsh’s team is still doing Type II fire mitigation duty, clearing brush and burning firelines relatively far from the danger itself. These are real men who double as daredevils, and the movie will cause you to see them differently, just as it forces you to look at a vista of unspoiled forest as they do: as fuel. For some audiences, arguments over drug addiction and the right time to have a child may seem trite and a tad too familiar, but that’s precisely what makes them so effective in this context.
Led by rawhide local fire chief Eric Marsh ( Josh Brolin, giving his best Tommy Lee Jones impersonation) and balanced by the ex-junkie recruit to whom he offers a second chance (another fine performance from the versatile Miles Teller), these are imperfect heroes, struggling with relatable problems in their private lives. As written by Eric Warren Singer and Ken Nolan (best known for adapting “Blackhawk Down,” working here from Sean Flynn’s GQ article), the script divides its time almost equally between wildland blazes and domestic drama - which is to say, it humanizes even as it valorizes. Like Michael Bay before him, hyper-visual director Joseph Kosinski (“Tron: Legacy,” “Oblivion”) hails from the world of commercials, and though he doesn’t suffer from Bay’s attention-deficit style, “Only the Brave” packs that same high-polish recruitment-spot feel witnessed in such high-testosterone servicemen salutes as “Patriots Day” and “13 Hours.” Though proud of its subject, it’s no mere propaganda, and while undeniably spectacular in its devastation, the movie offers more depth than your typical disaster movie.
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