This used to be one of my favourite movies when I was 7 years old (that is when it came out), the trouble is that I haven't watched it ever since, so when I saw it programmed on the local cable, I thought "Why not". Boy was I wrong. I should have let the doozy sleep in its grave made of fond (distorted) childhood memories.Off the bat - we start with a scene of kids playing in a firestation when a fire alarm goes off, so what do the sensible adults do -take the 4-year old (? I dunno how old is he supposed to be but he doesn't look older than 5), to a fire. Cause which four-year old didn't like to set fire to stuff? :) While the syrens go off, we're barraged with Hans Zimmer over-the-top heroic music and a triumphant ride of the firefighters through the town waving at them. The only thing the scene lacks for total cornitude is a bunch of cheerleeders in a firefighting costume waving fire-colored pom-poms at the site of the fire. That goes in my imagination as the firefighters would just ride around town blasting heroic music non-stop, then go back to the station, to get their dose of heroic exhibitionism. Blast that horn, Grant. Immediately arriving at the site of the fire the firefighting team goes to heroically save a girl who isn't poisoned sick from the fumes, and wears a pristinely pink robe (a mini-damsel in distress for our heroical Grant's dad), but it all goes to smithereens when a strategically placed gas bottle (seriously who would place a bottle in the attic in an appartment building?) explodes, cleanly killing Grant's dad while sending his firefighter's helmet neatly into the Grant"s hands, which is when Grant takes an oath to extinguish ALLL THE FIRES and goes on to psychotically snuff out gas boilers, house heater pilot lights, petroleum cracking plant furnaces, hot air balloons and campfires.... no he doesn't do that, but he might as well have, because another layer of corn gets dumped on it, when a reporter appears out of nowhere and takes celebrity shots of our determined 4-year old who'd just lost his dad (but it's not a big deal). Flash(!) forward 20 years and we're in a stereotypical bar scene where EVERYONE (including the random bar patrons) celebrate Grant's grade of 17 (our of 20? out of 100? did he pass?) for firefighting, a building blows up in a conflagration in a screen cut, but our merry firefighters are frolicking with their eternal nemesis (the trope is not subverted here) - the policemen, using the oldest trick in the book - fire hydrant. Here you can also strike a "harmless-foreign-crone-speaking-gibberish-is-comically-angry" off your Holywood bingo and get introduced to the less-than-believable paramour, who exposes the cronyism ;) of the hollywoodean Americana by having just taken a position working at the city hall (so the Grant's family and friends are controlling the police, the fire department and the city hall :). That goes only downhill from then on, and the total volume of cheese and corn forcibly extruded in all earnest (everything is VERY very serious here) onto the unsuspecting viewer is sufficient to feed a small starving african country. Other viewers have already weighted in on that (aka "Fire is a fire elemental").4 for the VFX and earnest acting, nothing for the scenario.

Ron Howard's 1991 action-drama "Backdraft" is one of the actor-turned-director's earliest and most magnificent of action-drama epics, in that it shows Howard's conceptual grasp of the story, the characters and more characteristic of much of his later work, his technical mastery of visually impressive (if not necessarily groundbreaking) special effects work - as well as an incredible technical accuracy of his subject matter (well, about as accurate as a movie such as this can possibly be).Human performances often tend to get lost in a spectacle such as "Backdraft," but the ensemble cast (some of whom surely do get more screen-time than others) and their respective personal dramas and complex relationships are able to match the spectacular pyrotechnic special effects sequences, which still hold up incredibly well 26 years later and have yet to be topped by today's overblown CGI special effects-laden blockbuster vehicles."Backdraft" is a big-budget action story about firefighters - and also written by a former firefighter, "Highlander" Gregory Widen - specifically those in the Chicago Fire Department, Station 17, the toughest "smoke-eaters" in the city. The film's title, as you may not know, refers to the real-life phenomenon of when a fire breaks out in a confined area, deprives itself of oxygen (but does not die out, it gets "snuffed"), and explodes with a violent fury when suddenly exposed to a massive rush of air.A mysterious serial arsonist is loose in the city, setting deadly "backdraft" fires that are so powerful, they blow themselves out long before the first fire engine shows up to try to extinguish the raging blaze. This arsonist goes to elaborate lengths to ensure the fires burn themselves out, while also making them look like terrible accidents. These same "backdraft" fires ultimately claim the lives of three men, but no one can establish a connection between them and why they were killed in the first place.But this murder mystery aspect of the story is just one of many stories being told here. The real meat of "Backdraft" concerns quarreling brothers Stephen McCaffrey (Kurt Russell) and his younger brother Brian McCaffrey (William Baldwin). As a child in 1971, Brian witnessed the death of their father on what was a routine firefighting job, and he even made the Pulitzer Prize-winning cover of a famous issue of "Life" magazine a year afterward. 20 years later, Stephen is a lieutenant at Station 17, and Brian has just graduated from the fire academy after failing out of several other professions; firefighting appears to be his one true calling, but he remains in the shadow of his older brother. Stephen manages to pull some strings in order to get Brian assigned to Station 17 with him and veteran firefighter John Adcox (Scott Glenn), who also knew and served with their late father and was like an uncle to the two boys.The two men have a strained relationship dating back to the death of their father and the way that their lives took wildly divergent directions as the years went by. Stephen shows a blatant disregard for well-established safety procedures, charging head-first, and mask-less, into fires where obviously any number of things can go wrong. This worries his teammates and has even caused Stephen to separate from his wife Helen (Rebecca De Mornay), who fears his reckless and dangerous ways and the effect it could have on their young son. Eventually, tensions come to a head between Stephen and Brian, and Brian quits Station 17 and, through his former flame Jennifer Vaitkus (Jennifer Jason Leigh), he goes to work with arson investigator Donald Rimgale (Robert De Niro), who is currently investigating the string of serial arsons. They turn to an incarcerated pyromaniac, Ronald Bartel (ever-creepy Donald Sutherland), whose M.O. provides them some valuable clues as to the killer's identity (a la, Dr. Hannibal Lecter in "The Silence of the Lambs," which came out earlier that same year).As I stated earlier, "Backdraft" is a masterpiece of technical pyrotechnic special effects wizardry. The film portrays fire as a living entity, one that "lives, breathes, and kills and the only way to truly kill it, is to love it a little." I've yet to see another film in the years since "Backdraft's" release in 1991 to bring fire to life on the screen the way that this movie does. This goes to show that Ron Howard was by no means working with an inexperienced special effects crew - Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), of all places. If anyone could get the job done and done right, it was ILM. One of the most eerie, yet spectacular sequences involves a flame being moved by air rushing from an open vent, like a snake reaching for the ceiling.Having seen the film today for the first time in several years, I'm still gosh-wowed at how "Backdraft" was made, the firefighting training that the performers surely had to endure, and the way that the pyrotechnics were achieved as to look realistic enough to film. The picture still looks great - Mikael Solomon's crystal-clear cinematography still holds up well today - and the picture looks even better on Blu-ray DVD, which is what I watched the film on."Backdraft" is an excellent action-drama that also doubles as a thrilling whodunit. If there was ever a better movie about firefighters, then it hasn't been made by Hollywood.9/10

The McCaffreys are a firefighting family; in 1971 Captain Dennis McCaffrey died in a fire that was witnessed by Brian, his younger son. Twenty years later Brain has joined the Chicago Fire Department; his older brother Lt Stephen "Bull" McCaffrey is unsure that Brian has what it takes so arranges for them to work together so he can keep an eye on his younger brother. Against this background a city alderman has been making cutbacks in the Fire Department which the firemen believe are putting lives in danger. There is also an unusual arsonist at work in the city; he is setting fires that kill the first person to open the door to them but are then blown out by the blast before the firemen arrive. Captain Donald "Shadow" Rimgale is investigating these fires and after one too many disagreements with his brother Brian joins his team. As they learn more about the fires and the victims it becomes apparent that the culprit could be a little too close to home.The first thing to say about this film is that the numerous fire scenes look fantastic… even if they do lack the thick smoke one would expect in such fires; obviously it wouldn't make such a good film if one couldn't see anything! The story is a good mix of firefighting action and a mystery about who is starting the fires and why. The cast is full of well know faces who do an impressive job; most notably William Baldwin and Kurt Russell as Brian and Stephen McCaffrey and Robert DeNero as Captain Rimgale. There are of course a few clichés along the way, most notably the fighting brothers who are reconciled in the face of danger at the end, but these don't really detract from ones enjoyment. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to anybody wanting a good action film; especially if you'd like to see protagonists who are something other than cops, spies or members of the military.

"Backdraft" is a tedious and formulaic story from which to hang its top notch cast and still amazing special effects. Brothers, the children of a famous firefighter, feuding with each other over who the true heir to the man's name is. A corrupt bureaucrat running for mayor on a platform of cutting funding to the fire department. One of our characters a closet firebug. But who?The older of the brothers is separated from his wife - Rebecca De Mornay - because she loves him too much to see him put himself in danger all the time. The younger of the brothers has a girl - Jennifer Jason Leigh - who doesn't seem to mind being put on hold and messed around while he works out his personal garbage: changing careers constantly because he isn't ready to face up to the true calling the movie has mapped out for him. Can you guess what it is?I guess it is to the movie's credit that it doesn't dwell on this silly, prefabricated character arc any more than it needs to, but not so much to its credit that two great actresses like De Mornay and Leigh are given basically nothing to do but be there for the men. Did the producers cave in to the homophobia of the audience and assume that, if not for the presence of token females, people might assume that their leads are gay?The movie has not one, but two scenes where one person is dangling off the edge of a large drop and another is holding them by the hand, but the grip is slipping. It's nothing we haven't seen before, and the movie largely fails to raise any tension, but it does look pretty good.