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Backdraft Reviews
"Backdraft" has boffo special effects but a B-movie script.
A hoary melodrama in which the clichés are more plentiful than the flames.
Backdraft is an old-school flick filled with masculinity and heroism, which might feel toxic and over-the-top at times, but it’s still satisfying.
In Universal's Backdraft, Ron Howard establishes that he can get the best actors in Hollywood to do work completely beneath their talents.
Backdraft is a well-intentioned film, very solid, and fierily entertaining. [Full review in Spanish]
The flames, in fact, have more personality than any of the actors.
[Howard] gives the fire fighting scenes a satisfying feel of terror. But the psychological portraits of the fire fighters and the arson mystery that dominate the film are flimsy, like an art student's dutifully crafted reproductions of the great masters.
Make no apologies for losing this movie about melodramatic and manly brothers.
After watching "Backdraft" you'll find you're no longer resentful when hit with the full force of an NYFD hook & ladder barreling down the block, sirens shrieking and air horn blaring "GAAGGHHH!!! GAAAGHHH!!!!" You'll respect America's firefighters more.
Although the movie is unrealistic in its depiction of fircfighting, it's a stunning piece of cinematic storytelling.
Until Backdraft, no one had mastered the effects necessary to show what it's like inside a burning building. Now someone has.
Ron Howard and screenwriter Steve Widen have distilled an essence of fear.
[Howard's] intuitive sense of the rhythms of popular entertainment keeps the picture from bogging down.
Dramatically, of course, it's utter twaddle, but with state-of-the-art incendiary special effects and a sex scene on top of a fire engine, there's plenty of bang for your buck.
The plot is hardly original, but Howard marshals the sprawling elements with great finesse and the fire footage, if harrowing at times, is genuinely exhilarating.
The movie definitely cools off when it gets bogged down with a murky plot involving an arsonist and political corruption. But it succeeds in exploring the combustible relationship between two firefighting brothers.
Director Ron Howard and screenwriter Gregory Widen seem to aspire to serious notions, but they are constantly sidetracked by soap opera cliches and slam-bang pyrotechnics.
While it is a treat to see this kind of old-fashioned film making a comeback, it's hard not to wish that the story grabbed us emotionally as convincingly as those darn fires.
...a decent thrill ride, and a smoking-hot slice of old-school entertainment...
Objectively, this is an overlong and overheated piece of work. But Ron Howard's visually stunning spectacle nevertheless feels human in its messiness and, for all its indulgence, memorably tactile and urgent in its conveyance of lives jeopardized.