Trial by Fire

Predictable plot but not bad: family drama in which two highly competitive sisters take different routes to their parents' attention. One is feminine and soft, the other a lean, mean, fighting machine (literally).

All the family infighting, and the fighter daughter's struggles to earn the respect of her fellow firefighters, rang mostly true if not breaking any new ground, although I did not find that character's physiology or physicality particularly convincing even when she was supposedly staggering along under huge loads during training. Her trainer's romantic overtures were predictable but not overdone.

Where the movie really fell apart was once the wildfire started. Not much passed the common sense smell test even if you know as little about the profession as I do. For our heroine to be the movie's biggest action hero required that a whole lot of characters with far greater expertise do incredibly stupid and unprofessional things to take themselves out of the running.

It might be the fault of the script focusing on triteness or a director addicted to dramatic overkill instead of coaxing the human truths out of the actors, but basically this was a potentially good story that overshot too many marks.

I am also a region 5 firefighter and all I can say about this movie is it is awful. Not only does it not represent what it takes to be a wildland firefighter but it also does makes the entire profession look like a macho fest with no rules, guidelines or knowledge. I wonder if this writer/director/crew did any research before doing this film. Rookie camp is 6-8 weeks, the physical requirements are not even the same as they are in real life. It takes much more years of experience to be a smokejumper and much more smarts than any of these actors portrayed. That simple information can be found on any smokejumper site. Truth-be-told I am embarrassed I even rented this film as a firefighter but I just wanted to see how realistic it was and I was right. If you watch this film please know that being a smokejumper takes much more work than this and being a wildland firefighter is a much more grueling profession that takes far more knowledge than these actors portrayed.

As a Firefighter for Region 5 for five years (1985-1990), this film was of interest to me as I have known female smoke jumpers.

After watching this film I saw only a few similarities to the reality of the job. 1. she was a female 2. they jump out of planes near fire inaccessible by foot. 3. there was fire

Apart from that most of the film was total rubbish The job is tremendously hard and no skinny woman like that would have been given a second look no matter how many members of family had been in the forest service. No how no way.

A smoke jumper would never EVER jump with winds that high, nor would an experienced firefighter try to run uphill from a fire, they ALL know it's pointless. And as for Brooke Burns climbing under a burning log well we were all crying with laughter as it was so unbelievably wrong.

To those of you who are firefighters who review this movie, don't you think we already understand that it isn't realistic?? It's called poetic license, and it's done all the time. I don't mean any disrespect to your profession and I greatly appreciate the expertise that it takes to do your job, but can't we just appreciate it for what it is, an entertaining movie??? I'm a nurse and a former scientist, but I don't bag all the movies where I see inconsistencies with reality, I just take it that the producers haven't had the years of education it takes to fully understand the job, and enjoy the film. Give the movie a break. If you take it for what it is, it's quite enjoyable.

This is a great film - an homage to Firefighters all around the world - especially smoke jumper - the so-called elite of firefighters :)

Interesting to note, that smoke jumpers were first deployed by the US in 1940 - which was a secret US government experiment during the start of WW 2, to stimulate male testosterone levels in high stress situation. But the experiment went sideways - not going as expected - creating firefighters who do crazy and irrational stuff, things better left alone - such as parachuting out of planes into flaming infernos, and getting impaled by trees.

Nonetheless, the program proved effective, with US smoke jumpers being deployed to this very day - unlike China, for example, since Chinese men lack the bravery and the guts to parachute into flaming infernos - and rather let the fires burn.

The raging fire of war, between Russia and Ukraine, being an example of that - since the Chinese elite is very reluctant to douse the fire of war - being afraid of the 'red heat' coming from Russia. In short, China should side with goodness, decency and virtue - as symbolized by the US Fire-Fighting leadership.

However, it must also emphasized, that due to climate change, wild fires are increasing all over the world. Hence it's imperative that technology is improved to fight fires - both in rural and urban areas - such as deploying drones and robots in the long run (and perhaps even 'forcefields' to smother fires) once fire-fighting technology has reached that level - which the entire International Community should work towards, in my opinion :)