Going to the movies can be fun if you like what you are watching. I loved watching “Ladder 49” starring John Travolta and Joaquin Phoenix.
“Ladder 49” made me laugh. It made me cry and made me proud to have firemen in the world to rescue us from the flames.
The film is set in Baltimore where Jack Morrison (Phoenix) is telling the story of his life while he waits to be rescued from his biggest blaze yet.
Morrison is under the wing of Fire Chief Mike Kennedy (Travolta) who has taught Morrison the ropes of firefighting.
While Morrison is trapped in the building waiting for the other firemen to try to get him out, the movie goes back and forth from flashbacks to present day to show the start of his career until the time that he gets trapped.
A rookie doing anything is hard, but put a rookie in with a group of veterans, and it’s even worse. Morrison got all the jokes played on him. From a goose he found in his locker at the firehouse that scared the crap out of him, to pretending to have a priest at the house, to asking questions about his sex life.
It was all part of being the new guy.
Firefighting is a very serious job, and the guys at “Ladder 49” took it that way. Brotherhood has a whole new meaning to these guys. You are the family with the “brothers” at the firehouse. The closeness that these guys share is beyond something that I have yet to experience.
Raw emotions were on the table as the guys watched their own die and get seriously hurt in the line of duty. That puts life into perspective for Morrison. When the brothers get injured, they pull themselves together, go out and do the job that they were trained to do.
As the story unfolds, Morrison is, now a veteran who saves peoples lives.
I watched this movie with a great deal of emotion and was captivated by the life of firemen.
Each blaze for the men carries the possibility that that they will not return to their families and that a red car will be at their house to tell their wives the bad news.
“Ladder 49” helps us better understand the lives of firemen and the emotional roller coaster that awaits them each day.
As Travolta’s character said in the movie: “The bravest of the brave.”
Not only are the firefighters that brave, but their wives are brave too. They watch their husbands go out to fight fires and worry about whether or not they will return home after their shift. They worry and pray that the red car doesn’t pull in the driveway.
It is not a life that I would like to have. My hat’s off to them.