Trial by Fire

This is one of those B movies that you find yourself stuck into on a Sunday afternoon when you're hungover. It actually wasn't that horrible; lots of hunky firemen, moderately bad special effects, just the right amount of cheese and Brooke Burns (who I may have just developed a girl crush on.) She looks amazing here and isn't afraid to get dirty, obviously doing most of the training scenes herself -I do remember from her Baywatch days that she was a triathlete in real life, not that I watched Baywatch or anything.

Brooke plays Kristin, a woman who joins the fire department to follow in her father's footsteps. When her Captain perishes in a fire Kristen is unfairly forced to take the blame and in the aftermath of that tragedy makes it her mission to become the first female ever to be accepted into the elite ranks of the Missoula Smokejumpers.

We follow her through the grueling, four week training program, struggles with the other members of the team and watch her steely determination as she learns to jump out of planes, into the flames and save the day. 07.11

I am a pilot and believe airplanes were made to be flown and not jumped out of. That said, I salute those that are smokejumpers. I salute those that fight forest fires. As an American from Indiana, I never knew how severe such devastation could be until living in Salmon Arm, BC when in 1998 we were evacuated because of one. The first in Canadian history for mass evacuation.

Since then there have been may fires that have caught national attention.

So what if the plot was weak? So what if the woman had skinny legs? Sorry but I do not believe in that BS. If she can do the job, I'll root for her.

Oh by the way, when I was in Vietnam, the best man for the job in many cases was someone that wasn't all brawn.

And finally, having lived and traveled across British Columbia, it was great seeing the old places again.

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.

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.

Entertaining movie but one of the most predictable movies I've seen lately. The writers tried to throw in every known plot twist: Her sister just happening to be camping in the fire area, the little girl going to the bathroom, but her parents looking for her everywhere but the bathroom, the bathroom door being stuck, her just happening to be on a date with one of the instructor when the whole thing goes down, the whole situation of a rookie being taken on a fire jump, etc. Maybe I watch too much TV, but when I can predict the whole movie after watching 5 minutes of it, does not show much originality on the part of the writers.