Before it came out, \Ladder 49"" was a scary prospect for three main reasons. It looked to be an exploitative firefighter movie that was cynically greenlit in the wake of Sept. 11; it looked like an unnecessary update of ""Backdraft""; and it appeared that the preview had given away the entire movie. Now that the movie is here, everyone can rest assured that ""Ladder 49"" does not suffer in any of those areas. The only thing from which ""Ladder 49"" suffers is overwhelming and sometimes comical badness.
The movie centers around Jack Morrison (Joaquin Phoenix), a young Baltimore firefighter who is trapped and injured in a burning warehouse. As he lies in wait of rescue or death, his entire adult life-as a firefighter, husband and father-is shown through flashbacks, which intermittently cut back to the present fire. The flashbacks show his early days in the firehouse, as he is taken under the wing of a kindly captain (John Travolta) and enters a marriage that is constantly under the strain of his dangerous job.
""Ladder 49"" is a train wreck of a movie, but what derails it more than anything is its excessive use of movie clich??s. Every rescue is choreographed predictably. Every one of the firemen has a name like Lenny Richter, Tommy Drake or Mike Kennedy. Every fireman is an Irish Catholic. Every conversation feels lifted from somewhere else-particularly the difficult ones between Morrison and his wife Linda (Jacinda Barrett).
Writer Lewis Colick (""Domestic Disturbance"") and director Jay Russell (""Tuck Everlasting"") deserve equal blame for the movie's failure. Colick's script deftly avoids telling us anything about the characters, skimming through their lives haphazardly. The use of flashbacks allows Colick to move quickly from Jack and Linda's first meeting to their marriage to their suddenly having two kids. Audience members can't blink without risking confusion from the random and lightning-quick changes to the lead characters' personal lives.
Meanwhile, Russell lacks both vision and pacing. Sometimes, he is merely victim to a mediocre script. For example, when the courtship between Jack and Linda is painfully underwritten, Russell tries to paper over it with close-ups of the two actors grinning at each other with misty eyes. But most of the times, he actively inflicts damage on the movie. In the several decently written scenes of friendly firehouse hijinks, Russell cripples the jokes with his poor comic timing. Well after the joke ends, the characters are still on screen.
Even worse are Russell's attempts at style. Nothing in the world can justify a slow-motion baptism. And the scenes of actual firefighting range from banal and uninvolving to flat-out goofy. The towering blazes never instill a sense of danger in the audience, while several death scenes have an accidental ""Indiana Jones"" quality about them. Most of the deaths are careless or slapstick as much as they are brave. This actually makes the movie less exploitative in tone, because it seems like a tribute not to fallen heroes, but only to really dumb firefighters who have passed away on the job.
Perhaps the one saving grace of ""Ladder 49"" is the surprisingly solid performance from Travolta. Travolta lends a certain presence, humor and believability that is absent from every other aspect of the movie. It's too bad he was handed such a small and unremarkable role; he actually did something with his meager character, unlike Phoenix, who is equally uncharismatic and bored-looking throughout.
No amount of Travolta rescue ""Ladder 49,"" though. It may not be cynical and it may not be completely expected, but ""Ladder 49"" is painted in such broad, clich??d strokes that it plays like an extremely long commercial for a movie that never quite exists. It doesn't have characters; it just has people on screen. It doesn't exploit; it just stinks.
