While Sept. 11 helped embellish the already heroic image of firefighters, "Ladder 49" doesn't owe any direct debt to such recent events. It plays, rather, like an old-fashioned, by-the-numbers drama ...

"Ladder 49" has just one aspiration behind it - to be a celebration of firefighters. This is good and bad. No movie in recent years, at least in this decade, has so convincingly conveyed what it's ...

This dramatic film was directed by Jay Russell, and its screenplay was written by Lewis Colick. Joaquin Phoenix stars as the Baltimore firefighter Jack Morrison, who is trapped inside a warehouse fire ...

Actor Tim Guinee didn't want to leave the fire service behind after filming "Ladder 49," so he took on the role of a firefighter in real life. Guinee joined his hometown Stone Ridge Volunteer Fire ...

The old downtown hospital in Annapolis is on the verge of getting star treatment. An all-but-finalized deal would open the vacant Anne Arundel Medical Center for use in the movie "Ladder 49," starring ...

TUCKED INTO the helmet actor Tim Guinee wore on the set of the firefighting movie “Ladder 49” was a picture of a legendary Fire Department captain who was among the 343 FDNY -heroes killed on 9/11.

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 brought firefighters a long-overdue surge in appreciation and acknowledgement. As heroes of the moment, firefighters (and, to a lesser extent, Dalmatians) basked in the ...

This dramatic film was directed by Jay Russell, and its screenplay was written by Lewis Colick. Joaquin Phoenix stars as the Baltimore firefighter Jack Morrison, who is trapped inside a warehouse fire ...

The problem with this film is that it's hardly a film, more an extended promo for the American firemen. And any advertisement stretching on for two hours will always be a bit too hard to take. Of ...

It's loud. It's noisy. It's downright cacophonous. That being the case, I'm led to wonder if turning up the volume is a director's ploy to draw an audience's attention away from corny melodrama. Is ...