After watching “Ladder 49,” you will never complain about moving to the side of the road to make room for a fire truck. The new movie is the most polished of recruiting films. But that doesn’t mean it ...

While Sept. 11 helped embellish the already heroic image of firefighters, "Ladder 49" doesn't owe any direct debt to such recent events. It plays, rather, like an old-fashioned, by-the-numbers drama ...

DETROIT -- John Travolta can't see the hand before his face, but he can feel the heat. He thinks he hears someone to his right, though it could just be a voice bouncing off a wall. He gropes in front ...

2004 drama released by Touchstone and Beacon Pictures. Directed by Jay Russell from a script by Lewis Colick. Features John Travolta and Joaquin Phoenix. Running time 105 minutes. Rated PG-13 for ...

THERE ARE real firefighters in the world who regularly perform heroic deeds. That is an inarguable fact, and it should not be confused with discussion of "Ladder 49," a movie that attempts to convey ...

Director Jay Russell’s edict on Ladder 49, his 9-11-inflected tribute to the workaday lives of firefighters, was to keep the blazes as furiously lifelike as possible. Visceral, pulsating and intensely ...

I hung out with a firefighter friend of mine the other night and it got me thinking about how there hasn't really been a cool fire movie since Backdraft. That may be about to change... Touchstone ...

In front of and behind the camera, Baltimore provided enthusiastic manpower. The most realistic parts of “Ladder 49,” the new film shot in Baltimore and starring John Travolta and Joaquin Phoenix, are ...

It's loud. It's noisy. It's downright cacophonous. That being the case, I'm led to wonder if turning up the volume is a director's ploy to draw an audience's attention away from corny melodrama. Is ...

When you make a movie like “Ladder 49,” about the day-to-day lives of firemen, almost anything you do runs the risk of being exploitative. It’s hard to know the right way — or even if there is a right ...