Director : Jay Russell Starring : Joaquin Phoenix, John Travolta, Jacinda Barrett Trailer for Ladder 49 Firehouse.com - download trailer (Various formats and sizes) (cms.firehouse.com) Cinema.com Trailer (www.cinema.com) More Movie Reviews...

Critics will sniff at Ladder 49, a movie about firefighters in Baltimore, for its earnest approach, for its lack of psychological demons, for its fraternity sensibilities. Emergency personnel, and most likely the public, will probably embrace it; it's well-crafted and has good intentions (as rare as almost anything in multiplexes these days). It deserves credit for that.

But it's not a good movie, I'm sad to say, for all the honorable efforts (I guess I'm sniffing too).

Though it starts out well, and crafts a sense of professional camaraderie, it lacks a certain strain of rigorous truth, in character, in execution, that is incumbent of it, particularly with its high purpose and demeanor. Though supposed, nothing confirms that 49 is giving us an insight into this dangerous profession, for all the tragedy that surrounds the picture, but rather, that it's giving us a tour of the station after-hours.

One scene, particularly, makes the point.

Jack Morrison (Joaquin Phoenix) has become an accepted member of Ladder 33 (that's the Ladder where he starts out and spends most of the picture, it's a curious thing (possibly a clue to the ending) that they named it after the firehouse he's in at the end of the picture). 33 is a firehouse run by Captain Mike Kennedy (John Travolta), an upstanding leader and a man's man. Jack has already experienced their sense of humor, his first day on the job involves a practical joke. But Jack has moved past rookie initiations and one day he opens his locker and a goose comes flying out of it, placed there by his wise-cracking buddies. Jack doesn't seem mad or even perturbed about the obvious mess he's got to take care of. He calls his wife like a giddy schoolgirl who has just made the cheerleading squad. It doesn't feel like a fireman phoning his spouse, a man with a wife and kids. It's an actor who makes a wrong choice and a director who lets him do it.

The actor, as we know, is Phoenix, who gives Morrison a working stiff upper lip. He's playing reserved and it ill suits him. As he proved in The Village he's not the strong and silent type. Though the type is Gary Cooper they have cast Sterling Hayden. It just doesn't gel. Most of the film is told in flashback (something Disney has labored to keep under wraps) as Jack is trapped inside an industrial blaze and thinks back on his life, while outside, the men of Ladder 49 attempt to rescue him.

The director is Jay Russell who made the slightly bathetic, but mostly very poignant and lovely My Dog Skip, and makes movies in general with ideals that are chapter headings in William Bennett's "Book of Virtues:" Friendship. Responsibility. Courage. Work. Loyalty. Faith.

All are in full flower here in Ladder 49, which is another positive for the film. Jack is, heaven forbid, a good father and husband (though how could you not be if you were married to Jacinda Barrett, an absolute favorite of mine since The Human Stain, The Real World: London be damned). He's committed to his job and he believes what he's doing is right and necessary. This paean to actual heroes and, perhaps as importantly, the mundane nature of their lives when they're not saving others, is compellingly done.

But Russell keeps extending his ladder as he goes along. There's one daring rescue too many. One death too many (the mortality rate in Ladder 33 is absolutely horrific). As they keep compounding the tragedy--as if this is a convincing way to increase the conflict on Jack to quit his profession, and extend another section--the movie grows more and more rickety.

I'm most certainly no fireman but I find it hard to imagine that in the stagnant downtime that emergency personnel will pop in Ladder 49 to while away the hours. Though it's quite effective at reminding us all of the sacrifices and rigors of that profession, and people who see it in theaters (particularly emergency personnel and their families) will be affected by its delivery and its message, it's a huge downer. A huge downer. I see it surviving the assessment of the ages in the same capacity as The Best Years of Our Lives, another noble, rickety effort.