Although he only appears in a minor role as Marsh’s best friend, the veteran actor provides most of the film’s emotional truth. Many of the scenes her shares with Jennifer Connelly, playing his unhappy wife, are only salvaged by the reliably excellent Jeff Bridges. Teller’s subtle acting and delivery of often rather blunt dialogue is what saves his character from being just another cliché in a film ridden with them.

Despite not having the prior experience or physical attributes required, McDonough signs up to join the fire crew led by Eric Marsh (a heavily mustachioed Josh Brolin). A drunkard without a job, he learns only through a friend that his ex-girlfriend is pregnant with his baby. His Brendan McDonough starts the film as a failure. Only through Miles Teller’s character are we given a realistic understanding of the peculiar lifestyle of mountain firefighters. Any sequence of physical training or simple conversation between the men is accompanied with banter of such ridiculous intensity, it all but undermines the seriousness of what is, after all, the true story of a tragedy. Yet the film is extremely anxious to deflect even the slightest hint of feminine or homosexual overtones in the characters’ self-care routines and close male relationships. Similarly, one can understand that the stress of the job and the need to rely on each other in life-or-death situations encourages very close bonds between colleagues. Rather, the film assumes that we already endorse this particular model of masculinity, in which physical strength is somehow equivalent to moral fortitude.Ĭonsidering that the main characters are a crew of elite firefighters – who go into the mountains lightly equipped to control the spread of wildfires – it is completely understandable that these men should be in optimum physical shape. But unlike Berg’s Patriots Day or Deepwater Horizon, Joseph Kosinski’s Only the Brave spends not a single minute of its long runtime trying to convince us of the righteousness of being a man’s man. Throughout his career Peter Berg has proved a master of making the most ardent American patriotism appear understandable, realistic and appealing even to non-American viewers. Miles Teller is the standout performer in this overly macho tale of an elite mountain firefighter crew.Īs the title suggests, Only the Brave is a film powered by machismo and patriotism.

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