Backdraft

We all know the kick ass poster with a silhouette of a fireman set against a raging inferno.  The guy looks like he's just out for a casual stroll in a burning building.  Man does it set your mind ablaze (pun intended) about how awesome of a movie you’re sure it is.  I’ve wanted to see this sucker forever and finally stopped pussyfooting around.  And goddamnit was it disappointing.

The plot is about a rookie Chicago fireman named Brian (William Baldwin (Flatliners, Sliver)) that gets assigned to the station run by his brother, Stephen (Kurt Russell).  Their father was a fireman too and I bet you can’t guess what happened to him.  That’s right, he retired peacefully to a Florida condo where he enjoys sippin’ piña coladas in the rain and occasionally making the ride out to Key West.  Nah, I’m just kiddin’.  He died fighting a fire.  Brian is haunted by it because he saw it happen but Stephen wasn’t there so he doesn’t seem to be bothered by the incident that much.  There’s also this other part to the story that involves Robert De Niro investigating fires set by an arsonist around the city.

And this is the biggest problem with this picture.  There’s too much story.  They either should’ve went with the brothers reuniting and learning to respect each other thing or the arsonist angle.  Putting both in there made it feel like I was watching two different films.  The thing is these stories aren’t really connected.  The link is really weak and doesn’t have anything to do with Brian finally growing up or Stephen learning to accept his brother as an adult.  A brothers relinking story that takes place in the middle of a bunch of fires (just regular fires and not stupid conspiracy ones) could’ve been something really great.  There’s so much trust, cooperation, quick decision making and courage involved in putting out a fire that it makes for the perfect tense scenario to place feuding characters in.

But most of the acting and dialogue is pretty bad.  This was William Baldwin’s big break and you can tell he’s trying hard.  But he’s got these dead eyes that stare off and he also suffers from Keanu Reeves syndrome where everything that comes out of his mouth just sounds so stupid that it’s difficult to take him seriously.  Kurt Russell goes his usual half way with this one.  He does just enough to get you off his back about phoning it in but not enough to actually praise him very much (or at all) or call his performance “standout” (or even “good”).  Jennifer Jason Leigh (eXistenZ, The Machinist) plays the love interest and she was fine.  I feel like she plays the same character in most of the movies I’ve seen her in.  Is it just me?  Lastly, De Niro looks like he’s kinda into it and J.T. Walsh (Blue Chips, Breakdown) is so good, as always, at playing a fucking scumbag.

Even with the spotty script and ok cast this picture is almost worth seeing (almost) for the firefighting scenes.  The whole idea was to give the fire a personality and make it a character.  I always think it sounds silly whenever a filmmaker says something like that (“the [insert inanimate object here] is really the main character”) but I guess it’s kinda true.  I mean the fire in this is fucking tenacious and really does attack our heroes.  It also growls and screeches which is pretty dumb but there’s a small part of me that likes it.

There are two big fire sequences and what’s great about them is that they used real fire and ash ‘n shit.  There are lots of explosions in these fires too which I’m not sure makes a lot of sense but they definitely add an enormous amount of excitement.  You really feel like our guys are totally immersed with no way out.  The special effects crew deserves a ton of credit for creating these massive infernos that engulf everything in its path.  At one point the blaze shoots towards the camera but they keep rolling.  The camera gets totally submerged in the shit. 

The best part of the movie is the last fire which takes place in a chemical warehouse.  They sure ended with a bang.  Brian has to run across a collapsing roof with an incredible wide shot that blends a model with a stunt guy running, people hanging off of shit that’s falling apart, the cinematography is first rate, the whole building is consumed with fire and things are constantly exploding.  It looks like total chaos and the entire time I was wondering how the hell they filmed it all and still stayed safe.

How cool is the title too?  I don’t think they explain it well in the movie but a backdraft happens when a fire uses up all the oxygen in a space and goes dormant.  The flames die down but it’s not dead.  When oxygen is introduced again the fire bursts back to life rapidly destroying everything in the immediate area.  The fires that the arsonist sets are backdrafts because they’re designed to eliminate a specific target and then die out.  I have to think that the title was chosen because a backdraft is also a good way to sum up Brian’s story arc.  He had high hopes of becoming a fireman like his dad but that passion went asleep for a long time after the dad died.  When Brian finally becomes a fireman his desire is rekindled and his skills blow up.

So overall this is a clumsy mess.  Like Kurt Russell plays both Stephen and the dad which was confusing at first, the dual plot creates excessive characters, some of the editing and transitions are confusing (like Brian and Stephen are having a dialogue scene but then it cuts to Brian walking from his car towards Stephen making it look like Brian just arrived), the first big warehouse fire is uncontainable one minute and then suddenly out the next, there are a couple of times when they reversed the film to show the fire retreating (I don’t care if that really happens in real life because it looks amateurish and downright goofy here) and etc. 

But I have to admit that this thing has two spectacular scenes (and holy shit that poster).

As a side note did anyone do Backdraft at Universal Studios Hollywood when it was still around?  I thought they recreated that chemical warehouse fire pretty well.  You could really feel the heat coming off the set.  This and Twister…Ride it Out are pretty even in my book.  Fire is cooler than wind and water but the floor drop at the end of Twister is a very nice touch.

As per the ride here are a couple of my own definitions of a backdraft: 

1. Backdraft: a mediocre film with a couple of effectively hectic and remarkable action scenes that may or may not make up for the rest of the movie.

2. Backdraft: an ok attraction that may not have had a lot going for it but was better than the schlock that replaced it (Transformers: The Ride).  Incidentally you can still experience Backdraft at Universal Studios Japan.