Only the Brave (2017)
Critic Reviews
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100
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Village Voice Bilge Ebiri
Only the Brave is a visually splendid, spellbinding, and surreal movie that also happens to be an emotionally shattering, over-the-top ugly-cry for the ages.
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90
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Variety Peter Debruge
It’s a gripping and powerfully emotional portrait of yee-haw heroism, pitting a squad of cocky, calendar-purty white dudes against an adversary with no creed or color, just an unquenchable appetite for destruction.
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86
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IGN William Bibbiani
It’s a straightforward celebration of these heroes’ lives, with a few meaningful revelations along the way, but nothing that will completely blow your mind. These are interesting, likable people who led interesting, exciting lives.
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80
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The Hollywood Reporter Todd McCarthy
Because of its cast of young men being buff and hormonal and good at their jobs, one could say that Only the Brave is the Top Gun of firefighter movies, the difference being that the new film feels like it's embedded in reality rather than in an aerial wet dream.
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80
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Screen International Tim Grierson
Kosinski settles for a simplistic ending, and the film can’t avoid certain narrative predictability, but for all its conventionality, it’s also brave enough to push against those conventions to find the humanity within its heroes.
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78
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TheWrap Alonso Duralde
As the story builds, these characters become richer and more complicated — and the stakes become more deadly — resulting in a movie with a delayed but no less potent dramatic punch.
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67
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IndieWire Eric Kohn
The movie is so cautious about avoiding disaster movie tropes that you can practically sense the resistance to arriving at the tragic finale. The result is a tasteful, well-acted bore, but so out of sync with traditional studio filmmaking it deserves some kudos anyway.
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60
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The Guardian Jordan Hoffman
There is a sincere effort to get beneath the facade of what an extremely fit twentysomething firefighter’s life is like. There’s even a possibility that the film’s first act is intentionally distancing so that the later scenes will have a bigger payoff.
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60
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Time Out
Despite the looming threats on display, Kosinski never imbues his movie with a real sense of danger until it’s too late to take the threat seriously. For all of the movie’s flare, Only the Brave lacks dynamism.
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58
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The A.V. Club Jesse Hassenger
So squarely old-fashioned that it’s a little jarring to notice that many of the characters have smartphones.
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