Review: Backdraft

William Baldwin is Brian McCaffrey, the wayward son of a fire-fighter who after trying out other employment, decides to follow the footsteps of his late father and veteran fire-fighter brother Stephen (Kurt Russell). Dad, of course died on the job when they were just kids. As we meet Brian as an adult, he has found himself sent to Stephen’s station. Neither brother gets along terribly well with the other, with Stephen thinking Brian’s a flake and Brian thinking his brother’s a bit of an arsehole (which he quite clearly is). Due to the inherent danger of the gig, alongside of the memory of what happened to his dad (and with older brother Stephen’s constant criticism not helping) Brian quickly finds the job a little tough on his nerves and quits. He eventually moves to a position working for a literally scarred arson investigator nicknamed ‘Shadow’ (Robert De Niro). And that’s where the plot thickens, as a recent string of fires appear to have the touch of someone intimately familiar with how fires work. Rebecca DeMornay plays the bitter Stephen’s ex-wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh is the hometown girl Brian reunites with who now works for the slimy city Alderman (J.T. Walsh, natch). Scott Glenn plays the most senior of the fire-fighters, with Juan Ramirez and Cedric Young as fellow fire-fighters, the latter a former real-life Chicago fire-fighter. Former NY fire-fighter turned actor Jack McGee also plays a fire-fighter here, and Jason Gedrick plays a young member of the fireman crew. Clint Howard turns up as a creepy pathologist, whilst Donald Sutherland has a memorable supporting role as a loony firebug.

 

Unless you count the all-star disaster movie “The Towering Inferno”, good fire-fighting movies are pretty hard to come by. This 1991 fire-fighting flick from director Ron Howard (“Splash”, “Parenthood”, “Apollo 13”) is probably the best of the lot. The fire FX hold up pretty well in 2016, probably because there’s a distinct lack of CG. You can see that steps were taken to ensure things were relatively safe on set (it looks like blue-screen was used from time to time, to me), but as best as I can tell, you’re pretty much seeing the real deal. That gives this film a lot of extra reality to it, and therefore a sense of danger. Scary stuff that really makes you appreciate that these guys could potentially die saving people, which is no doubt what Howard and screenwriter Gregory Widen (“Highlander”, writer-director of the underrated genre flick “Prophecy”) are aiming for.

 

It’s a solid and extremely entertaining film, but poor female characters and plot transparency stop it from being even better. It definitely gets a boost from several top performances, particularly those of Kurt Russell, Robert De Niro, and especially Donald Sutherland. In what is really an extended cameo eerily similar in function to a certain Oscar-winner the same year, Sutherland is in my view actually more impressive than Sir Anthony Hopkins in “Silence of the Lambs”. It’s a big call, but for me, Hopkins did an entertaining bit of show-boating, whereas Sutherland really seems to be genuinely crazy and is more character than performance. It’s a masterful cameo that you won’t likely forget, at the very least. Kurt Russell really excels at this kind of blue-collar hero-type, but in this particular case he also comes equipped with a bit of arsehole older brother vibe, too. It’s a perfect fit for the underrated actor, one of his best roles in the 1990s for sure. The film would be a lot lesser without his able masculine presence. As for De Niro, it’s nothing great, but he does a really solid bit of grunt work playing a character you would probably like to have seen more of in the film.

 

The film’s real star is William Baldwin, and he’s OK. He was always OK, in fact I’m not sure why his career hasn’t been more prolific. He’s not the least talented member of his family and was probably blessed with the best looks of the lot, too. For some reason, possibly related to films starring Sharon Stone and Cindy Crawford, it never quite panned out for him (“Virus” didn’t help either, now that I think of it) on the big screen and he’s since been featured more frequently on television. Scott Glenn is probably a little too young for his role when you think about the opening scene, but it’s one of his better performances by far. Meanwhile, was there ever someone better at playing bland, humourless and often corrupt authority figures than the late J.T. Walsh? Not that I can think of, and he’s dependably rock-solid here. There’s nothing wrong with Rebecca DeMornay here, but Howard and Widen aren’t interested in her, unfortunately. Similarly, Jennifer Jason Leigh doesn’t get much of a role despite decent screen time. As usual, she looks terminally depressed and is a charisma vacuum. If you’ve ever wondered whatever became of “Iron Eagle” star Jason Gedrick, well in 1991 he apparently looked like the love child of Mike Myers and Matthew Broderick. He might as well have ‘dead meat’ written on his forehead in this.

 

With a less predictable mystery at the centre, this could’ve been even better than it is. As is, it’s one of the best films of its type, and pretty damn authentic and well-acted. Donald Sutherland is chilling as a chuckling firebug.

 

Rating: B