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Ladder 49

BY JOHN ANDERSON | STAFF WRITER

October 1, 2004

(PG-13). The fire this time: As a firefighter lies injured, his life flashes before our eyes. No heartstring is left unplucked. With Joaquin Phoenix, John Travolta, Jacinda Barrett, Robert Patrick. Written by Lewis Colick. Directed by Jay Russell. 1:55 (intense action, language). At area theaters.

Although situated in Baltimore and heavily accented with Boston Irish, "Ladder 49" is so obviously inspired, and indebted, to the men who gave their lives in the World Trade Center that one can hardly imagine the movie having been made without the heroics of the New York Fire Department. Nor can one imagine it having much emotional impact, without the borrowed sentiments of 9/11.

That said, should everyone concerned with the film decide to donate their earnings to the widows and children of the NYFD, we would, of course, be thoroughly shocked. But hardly dissuasive.

The movie's sense of opportunism - added to a story and execution sodden with pathos, and a soundtrack that, when not taking a fire ax to your cerebellum, is scratching guitar strings into scrap metal - would seem to make "Ladder 49" bearable only to people in deep mourning and vulnerable to emotional coercion. Which is, of course what makes the whole thing so distasteful.

Joaquin Phoenix, mumbling more than usual, is Jack Morrison, whom we first meet as he's about to plummet a number of stories through an exploding, collapsing skyscraper (yes, indeed), landing in a virtually inaccessible basement of rubble and broken steel. His captain, Mike Kennedy (John Travolta), reaches him by radio, and diverts all his manpower into rescuing Jack. As the moments tick away, scenes from Jack's life and career alternate with his increasingly desperate spot in the fire.

It's a supremely workable story format: Jack arrives in his camaraderie-rich Baltimore stationhouse eager to save lives and subject to the traditional hazing of rookies (at which point director Jay Russell cuts back to Jack in the basement). We see him meet the gorgeous Linda, played by Lucinda Barrett (and then back to the basement), then dating (basement), wedding (basement), childbirth (basement) and backyard barbecue (basement). Eventually, flashbacks catch up to the present and we stay in the basement.

Those ubiquitous posters of Travolta and Phoenix in their fire helmets makes them look a bit like a pair of Michael Dukaki in that campaign-demolishing tank. It's unfair - both actors give decent performances; Travolta is particularly appealing. But "Ladder 49" is, among other things, a movie impressed by its own special effects, which aren't so special, and one burdened by comedy Catholicism, cheap emotion and oh-so-obvious direction: Having just saved a life, Jack arrives at midnight Mass just as the choir is singing "O Come All Ye Faithful"; panicky rats descending a staircase as Jack climbs up are in better formation than most grade- school kids in a fire drill.

My favorite, though, is the cut from a baptism to water dripping on Jack's head back in, yes, that basement. The water motif is appropriate, though, given that it is used in certain forms of slow torture.