This used to be one of my favourite movies when I was 7 years old (that is when it came out), the trouble is that I haven't watched it ever since, so when I saw it programmed on the local cable, I thought "Why not". Boy was I wrong. I should have let the doozy sleep in its grave made of fond (distorted) childhood memories.Off the bat - we start with a scene of kids playing in a firestation when a fire alarm goes off, so what do the sensible adults do -take the 4-year old (? I dunno how old is he supposed to be but he doesn't look older than 5), to a fire. Cause which four-year old didn't like to set fire to stuff? :) While the syrens go off, we're barraged with Hans Zimmer over-the-top heroic music and a triumphant ride of the firefighters through the town waving at them. The only thing the scene lacks for total cornitude is a bunch of cheerleeders in a firefighting costume waving fire-colored pom-poms at the site of the fire. That goes in my imagination as the firefighters would just ride around town blasting heroic music non-stop, then go back to the station, to get their dose of heroic exhibitionism. Blast that horn, Grant. Immediately arriving at the site of the fire the firefighting team goes to heroically save a girl who isn't poisoned sick from the fumes, and wears a pristinely pink robe (a mini-damsel in distress for our heroical Grant's dad), but it all goes to smithereens when a strategically placed gas bottle (seriously who would place a bottle in the attic in an appartment building?) explodes, cleanly killing Grant's dad while sending his firefighter's helmet neatly into the Grant"s hands, which is when Grant takes an oath to extinguish ALLL THE FIRES and goes on to psychotically snuff out gas boilers, house heater pilot lights, petroleum cracking plant furnaces, hot air balloons and campfires.... no he doesn't do that, but he might as well have, because another layer of corn gets dumped on it, when a reporter appears out of nowhere and takes celebrity shots of our determined 4-year old who'd just lost his dad (but it's not a big deal). Flash(!) forward 20 years and we're in a stereotypical bar scene where EVERYONE (including the random bar patrons) celebrate Grant's grade of 17 (our of 20? out of 100? did he pass?) for firefighting, a building blows up in a conflagration in a screen cut, but our merry firefighters are frolicking with their eternal nemesis (the trope is not subverted here) - the policemen, using the oldest trick in the book - fire hydrant. Here you can also strike a "harmless-foreign-crone-speaking-gibberish-is-comically-angry" off your Holywood bingo and get introduced to the less-than-believable paramour, who exposes the cronyism ;) of the hollywoodean Americana by having just taken a position working at the city hall (so the Grant's family and friends are controlling the police, the fire department and the city hall :). That goes only downhill from then on, and the total volume of cheese and corn forcibly extruded in all earnest (everything is VERY very serious here) onto the unsuspecting viewer is sufficient to feed a small starving african country. Other viewers have already weighted in on that (aka "Fire is a fire elemental").4 for the VFX and earnest acting, nothing for the scenario.

"Backdraft" is a tedious and formulaic story from which to hang its top notch cast and still amazing special effects. Brothers, the children of a famous firefighter, feuding with each other over who the true heir to the man's name is. A corrupt bureaucrat running for mayor on a platform of cutting funding to the fire department. One of our characters a closet firebug. But who?The older of the brothers is separated from his wife - Rebecca De Mornay - because she loves him too much to see him put himself in danger all the time. The younger of the brothers has a girl - Jennifer Jason Leigh - who doesn't seem to mind being put on hold and messed around while he works out his personal garbage: changing careers constantly because he isn't ready to face up to the true calling the movie has mapped out for him. Can you guess what it is?I guess it is to the movie's credit that it doesn't dwell on this silly, prefabricated character arc any more than it needs to, but not so much to its credit that two great actresses like De Mornay and Leigh are given basically nothing to do but be there for the men. Did the producers cave in to the homophobia of the audience and assume that, if not for the presence of token females, people might assume that their leads are gay?The movie has not one, but two scenes where one person is dangling off the edge of a large drop and another is holding them by the hand, but the grip is slipping. It's nothing we haven't seen before, and the movie largely fails to raise any tension, but it does look pretty good.

Hi guys, Movie was amazing, soundtrack just as good kept me entertained the whole movie, Ron Howard did yet another classic job Just One ThingI got the soundtrack but I have been looking for years for this song. It starts when they enter the firemans dinner thing and the words go the Last forgotten driver... bla bla bla with a guitar paying in the background then they talk then they fight but its the last you hear of it and there's nothing in the credits anyone who knows this would be a great help.. cheers Stuff like this should be kept on the cd and not removed because whoever did it didn't want it on its a part of a movie so put it on it..

Trying to re-watch Ron Howard's "Backdraft" on Netflix. I've never seen a movie with so many clichés -- dead father big brother clichés; ex-girlfriend clichés; camaraderie clichés; dead best friend clichés; beer drinking firefighter clichés; evil budget cutting corrupt politician clichés; creepy arsonist clichés; separated wife and sad son clichés; even the city of Chicago is a friggin' cliché. -- But worth it just to watch the fire special effects. And this is from 1991 before digital visual effects. I remembered not liking this when it came out -- I saw the pan and scan version on VHS. -- It is much better in letterbox on the large hi-def screen. Ron Howard is a great filmmaker but this is probably his worst film ever.