logo
'Must see' Netflix disaster movie based on harrowing real events

'Must see' Netflix disaster movie based on harrowing real events

Daily Record09-05-2025

This overlooked film has an A-list cast that re-tells the 'heart-breaking' real-life story
This biographical drama focuses on the real-life stories of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, an elite crew of American firefighters who lost all but one of their members during a wildfire. Only The Brave tells the true story of the 20 servicemen and women who worked tirelessly to fight the 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona.
Of the team of 20, 19 didn't make it out alive, leaving one man behind, Brendan McDonough, who is played by Top Gun: Maverick star Miles Teller. Their tragic story struck the nation and led to their legacy being memorialised in this film.

It's directed by Joseph Kosinski, the man behind the 2022 Top Gun sequel, as well as films such as Oblivion and the soon-to-be-released Brad Pitt movie F1.

A viewer took to Rotten Tomatoes to say: "Wow. I don't want to give a single thing away, so I won't comment on the plot. This is a must-see. the acting, the pacing, the storyline, the character arcs, the production, the music tie-ins, the directing. everything!! one of my favourites now."
While another claimed: "A truly gripping and heart-wrenching true story, Only the Brave showcases Joseph Kosinski's talent as a truly versatile director, with multiple great performances, some horrifying realistic effects, and uncomplicated writing that gets straight to the point."
Starring in the movie as some of the brave firefighters are none other than Josh Brolin, James Badge Dale, and Jeff Bridges. Joining them on screen are actresses Andie MacDowell and Jennifer Connelly, as well as X-Men actor Ben Hardy.
Many viewers have praised the ensemble cast's performances in what is a very character-driven story. Not only this, but the filmmakers' accuracy in handling the subject with sensitivity while still adding extra details for dramatic effect.
A review reads: "Only The Brave joins many real-life-based films that honour and respect true heroism. This is a movie with good performances and a real emotional centre. There are exhilarating moments that kept me on the edge of my seat, but the movie shines with its human story and really being character-driven.
"The ending of this story is pretty heart-breaking stuff, and I think it is impossible for anyone who watches it to not be moved by it." They went on to say that they felt the film "flew completely off the radar" during its 2017 release and years later "deserves more attention".
Unfortunately in 2017, the thriller failed to be a box office hit, not quite making enough against its $38 million production budget. Only the Brave grossed a worldwide total of $25.8 million, but years on, fans are still discovering the moving movie and learning about its real-life heroes.
One viewer shared: "Although it's very Hollywood, the acting is solid, the story is compelling, and, well, it's about a bunch of real heroes. And you learn a lot about wildfires and how they're fought."
You can watch Only The Brave on Netflix now.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Ingenious: the Globe's Romeo & Juliet reviewed
Ingenious: the Globe's Romeo & Juliet reviewed

Spectator

timean hour ago

  • Spectator

Ingenious: the Globe's Romeo & Juliet reviewed

Cul-de-Sac feels like an ersatz sitcom of a kind that's increasingly common on the fringe. Audiences are eager to see an unpretentious domestic comedy set in a kitchen or a sitting-room where the characters gossip, argue, fall in love, break up and so on. TV broadcasters can't produce this sort of vernacular entertainment and they treat audiences as atomised members of racial ghettos or social tribes. And they assume that every viewer is an irascible brat who can't bear to hear uncensored language without having a tantrum. The result is that TV comedy often feels like appeasement rather than entertainment. Theatre producers are keen to fill the gap, and the latest effort by writer-director David Shopland declares its ambitions in its title. Cul-de-Sac is set on a housing estate where Frank and Ruth are busy destroying their marriage. Ruth lounges on the sofa all day drinking sherry and mourning the loss of her career as a therapist. Frank is a depressed salaryman who rants and raves obsessively about a mysterious Mercedes parked by his kerb. The couple make friends with a timid bisexual neighbour, Simon, whose wife has just run off with his brother. More characters arrive. Marie is a beautiful, nerdy evangelical who recruits worshippers for her husband's church by knocking on strangers' doors. Her latest disciple, Hamza, is a Kurdish businessman who owns the Mercedes that blocks Frank's drive. Thus the messy social circle is complete. The characters are quirky, likeable and easy to relate to. And the show is full of awkward comic moments and latent sexual conflict. The best character, Simon, is perhaps too obviously based on Alan Bennett. He has a squashed blond hairdo and geeky black-rimmed glasses, and he speaks in a lugubrious, wheedling Yorkshire accent. The show is good fun for 90 minutes but after the interval, disaster strikes. The script morphs into an anguished memory play and the characters become self-pitying bores. They take it in turns to describe the most grisly moment of their lives. Ruth explains the crisis that terminated her therapy career. Marie reveals the difficult truth about her missionary work. The men recount tales of loss and bereavement caused by lethal explosions and murderous terrorist attacks. These distressing back-stories have no shape or dramatic direction and the show becomes an interminable group-therapy session. At the climax, a suitcase is opened to reveal a blood-stained item of clothing, and the script delivers 'messages' about the virtues of tolerance. We're warned not to indulge in xenophobia or to lay blame on a particular faith for the crimes of a few extremists. In other words, it feels like a TV show. Perhaps Netflix will pick it up. At the Globe, Sean Holmes offers an ingenious new take on Romeo and Juliet. His inspiration? Set the show in the Wild West. It makes sense, just about, to plonk the story into a frontier town where two murderous families are locked in a deadly feud. The Victorian age was a time of stylish and dignified fashions so the show looks terrific. The women swish around in sumptuous full-length gowns while the men sport frockcoats, hip-hugging trousers and chic leather boots. The cowboy hats are a bit of a problem. Thesps hate wearing headgear that conceals their faces, and in this production the actors wear their hats shoved well back on their heads so that their handsome mugs can be seen at all times. Perhaps the hats could be ditched altogether. This feels like a TV show. Perhaps Netflix will pick it up Most of the cast are pretty good, some are exceptional. Michael Elcock's Mercutio is a mischievous, charming street hustler who turns the tricky Queen Mab monologue into a tour de force by pretending that it's the most hilarious joke he's ever heard. (On the page, the speech reads like a bad dream about a spider improvised by a stoned poet.) Elcock's playful, fleet-footed Mercutio makes Romeo seem like an angry dullard by comparison, but that's always a risk with this play. At least Rawaed Asde (Romeo) has the dreamy good looks of a movie star. His Juliet (Lola Shalam) plays the part as a cheery Essex blonde with a heart of steel. When her father threatens to force her out of the house, he looks more scared than she does. Jamie Rose-Monk's Nurse is too young to perform the role as a venerable lady's maid and she plays it like Juliet's best mate from school. Dharmesh Patel works wonders with the small role of Peter by adding balletic little hand gestures and other physical absurdities. None of his play-acting is in the script but it comes across beautifully in the festive, carefree atmosphere of the Globe. This is an object lesson in how to reconceptualise Shakespeare. The idea of the Wild West is lightly handled and it offers witty suggestions rather than imposing ugly restrictions.

The charm of Robbie Williams
The charm of Robbie Williams

Spectator

timean hour ago

  • Spectator

The charm of Robbie Williams

What could it possibly feel like to be a sportsperson who gets the yips? To wake up one morning and be unable to replicate the technical skills that define you. To suddenly find the thing you do well absolutely impossible. Golfers who lose their swing, cricketers whose bowling deserts them, snooker players who can't sink a pot. Stage fright – something both Robbie Williams and Cat Power have suffered from – is much the same. Williams took seven years off touring last decade because of it, which must have been devastating for someone whose need for validation is so intense that he has made it his brand. Chan Marshall, the American singer who performs as Cat Power, toured through hers, resulting in shows performed on stages in near-darkness, or that ended early or were undermined by alcohol and the other things that terror forced on her. Both are now in their fifties, both still performing, both very consciously revisiting the past in their own ways, and you couldn't have got two more different performances. Williams, early in proceedings, announced his intention to be recognised globally as the King of Entertainment – Michael Jackson having already taken the title of King of Pop ('And you don't even have to come for a sleepover at my house!'). And truly, we were entertained. Even the boring bits – and there were boring bits, usually played out on the video screens – were entertaining by the standard of the boring video bits at stadium shows. The only part that was truly misjudged was a singalong medley of covers – he'd just done 'Let Me Entertain You' and been joined on the chorus by 60,000 people, so he didn't need to get the crowd loose. Better Man, the ape-as-Robbie biopic, has plainly resurrected him as an item of public interest after a period in which his appeal was becoming, Spinal Tap-style, a little more selective. 'Robbie fucking Williams. Back in stadiums,' he noted, and one wouldn't have predicted it even a couple of years ago. At heart it was a variety show: rock songs, singalong ballads, a load of jokes, a couple of set pieces and a pair of standards. Performing 'My Way' and '(Theme From) New York, New York' absolutely straight and with complete sincerity, gave away the lineage in which he places himself – and it's not next to Oasis. Obviously, he sees himself as an old-fashioned song-and-dance man, and he's a very, very good one – whether in end-of-the-pier or big-stadium mode. At a press conference in San Francisco in December 1965, Bob Dylan was asked whether he thought of himself as a singer or a poet: 'Oh, I think of myself more as a song-and-dance man, y'know.' That is the sole point of connection between Williams and Cat Power; for while he ran into the spotlight, she stayed in the shadows: her songs at the Barbican had no hint of dance about them. Her set, based on Dylan's 1966 tour with the Band (with an acoustic first half, then an electric second), has had writers asking why? Let's assume she just likes the songs, and if Bob Dylan is going to play them like this, why shouldn't she? But watching her expert band recreate what Dylan called 'that thin, wild, mercury sound' was a reminder that she could never hope to recreate the cultural force of Dylan going electric; that music loses its power shorn of context. The trio of records that unveiled Dylan's sound – Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde – are one of the rare points in pop history where you can hear a style of music being invented as it is recorded: if it were made now, you'd call it Americana, a thrilling amalgam of country, folk and R&B played by kids who'd grown up on rock'n'roll. It is thrilling because you can still hear history being made. But repeating it 59 years later? This was the rock equivalent of watching a BBC2 documentary where Lucy Worsley stands in front of someone pretending to be Richard III and enquiring about a horse. The songs with Robbie Williams's name attached to them are not as profound as those with Dylan's name attached to them. 'You think that I'm strong/ You're wrong/ You're wrong/ I sing my song/ My song/ My song,' will never win the nobel prize for literature. But the nakedness of Williams's neediness, and his complete awareness of his own limitations, is winning. Where Power has all but removed herself from her own performance, Williams's show is about one thing: him and only him. Not even the music. Just him.

Brian Wilson's 10 best tracks (and the stories behind them)
Brian Wilson's 10 best tracks (and the stories behind them)

Evening Standard

time2 hours ago

  • Evening Standard

Brian Wilson's 10 best tracks (and the stories behind them)

So after Pet Sounds, and after the single Good Vibrations that's when it all started to go wrong for Wilson. The follow-up album - started the same year, 1966, as those landmark releases, such was the pace of creation at the time - was called Smile and was set to take the Beach Boys' music to even more ambitious heights with a concept album about American history, with a mash of high and low styles, with Wilson describing it as a 'teenage symphony to God.' By this stage he had been regularly seeking enlightenment with heavy LSD trips but also trying to capture bad trips on record, as with the track The Elements: Fire, but began to get spooked about the 'witchcraft music.' He had made everyone wear fireman's helmets during the recording and filled the studio with smoke. But when he heard a local building had burnt down, he thought it was his fault and stopped the recording.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store