Firefighter's Wife: Have you ever considered baby-sitting full time?
Chief: What do you think I do at the firehouse?

Ladder 49 is one of those movies that's stuctured with one big event in the current day that they keep breaking away from to show how the main character got there in flashbacks. This is an oft used structure, and almost always results in an overly-sentimental movie. This is no exception.

This caught me off guard a bit, and I suspect it had the same effect on others. I was expecting a bit more suspense, a bit more action. There's some of those things here, but it's mostly watching Juaquin Phoenix go from a rookie firefighter to a more senior firefighter and building a family around the whole thing. I've been told that this is a pretty realistic view of what it's like to be a firefighter and be around a firehouse.

It's a good movie. And I'll even give them credit for making a line that was laughable in the trailer work in the movie (People are always asking me how is it that firefighters run into a burning building when everyone else is running out. Courage is the answer.) Plus, this movie isn't afraid to make hard choices, which I was proud of it for. But the best part about it is it's skill in exploring the backstory and sentiment. The characters are real, their relationships are real and convincing, and we really get a sense of the firehouse comraderie. This is a movie not about exceptional people and exceptions things, it just explores people who I could imagine meeting in real life. Like I said: a different movie then the one I thought I was going to get when it started.

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