BACKDRAFT is a blockbusting firefighter thriller that involves a couple of warring siblings who are caught up in a plot involving a mysterious arsonist with a vendetta against a group of seemingly unconnected men. The film suffers a little from being a bit overlong and a bit too melodramatic, with too much time given over to the family dynamics when more thrills and spills would have worked. Still, it's well worth a look, not least for the fiery set-pieces which are nicely staged by a then-youthful Ron Howard. William Baldwin performs well in a rare leading role, although his thunder is stolen by a brash Kurt Russell and a strong supporting cast that includes J.T. Walsh, Robert De Niro, and Scott Glenn.

(Originally reviewed: 20/01/2017) Backdraft is no more than a run of the mill action picture with nothing deep, factual or well established with the exception of a few good sequences. William Baldwin play's the lead character and he is wooden, unimaginative and dull, Russell plays his older brother and is more convincing and more engaging than him without a doubt. Then there's Rebecca De Mornay (Russel's wife), Robert De Niro (fire investigator), Donald Sutherland (crazed Arsonist) and Jennifer Jason Leigh (Baldwin's love interest) who all give respectable performances, most notably Robert De Niro who I feel should have had a lot more screen time.During the first half of the picture the firefighters act as if there job is a laughing matter, where you see them trying to beat each other to the person in distress, or other scenes where there in bars clowning around, I will concede the bar fight was entertaining. The best moments in this picture are when two characters are communicating in a serious fashion for a change this includes Mornay and Russel's fairly engaging scenes and De Niro and Sutherland's interesting scene during a parole hearing. I could even praise Jennifer Jason Leigh if her co- actor (Baldwin) did not look so bland while delivering his lines.Howard's direction is decent but the action looks fake and I cannot care for a film that has numerous silly backstory's and a twist that will make anyone lose brain cells. I also didn't care for a lot of the dialogue and the slow pace, however they were not the fatal problem; Howard's picture suffers from a lack of realism, Baldwin's emotionless performance and too many silly plot contrivances.

It is nice to see an action movie that is about civil service and not about the police isn't it? Kind of refreshing. Cop, cop, cop, cop, cop, cop, cop, firemen.I might be bias, my brother-in-law is a firefighter...but I never really liked him, and I loved this movie long before I met him.There are a lot of people here criticizing it because "the fire is the real star." All I have to say is that they are right, just like the action is the real star in a lot of movies. I mean, wasn't the car the real star in "Bullet?" The car is sort of the star in "Supernatural" too, isn't it...and besides, how many movies have you seen that star fire and well, it's so cool in a pyromania action adventure sort of way.They also say it is full of clichés and, well, they are right on that count too. BUT, well, a lot of other action movies are wall-to-wall clichés and have cops and guns and are loved. This is the same thing only with fire, and should be loved for the same reasons.At least clichés with fire is far more original than clichés with guns in the action movie trope.The acting isn't as melodramatic as people say. There are one or two scenes where, yeah, everyone has to admit that they are over-the-top, but on the whole we still see a lot of naturalistic acting.What you have here is just a fun movie...but it is a fun movie written by Gregory Widen and he really is a great screen writer with some truly original and fun ideas. You see his name attached as a writer and you know you're in for a fun time. It's just a shame the people that wrote the sequels to his films ruined his career.

"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.