Unabashed love letter to firefighters everywhere.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 25, 2010

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 1, 2006

Heartfelt, predictable, and finally surprisingly poignant.

| Original Score: B- | Mar 24, 2005

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 19, 2004

This day-in-the-life melodrama is a surprisingly good piece of work, and while it covers no new ground it certainly holds the attention.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 6, 2004

A serviceable testament to the firemen who would bravely risk their lives to protect the safety of others, etc., etc.

Full Review | Oct 6, 2004

Ladder 49 might have been an oversized Hollywood dazzler. Phoenix keeps it firmly and modestly on a human scale.

| Oct 1, 2004

Offers audiences a real rarity in theaters these days: a good, honest cry.

| Oct 1, 2004

Even the best scenes feel canned, secondhand, packaged. We've seen this all before.

| Oct 1, 2004

The story of Jack Morrison (Joaquin Phoenix), a guy so emotionally uncomplicated and unquestioningly dedicated to rescuing people he might have been raised by Saint Bernards.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 1, 2004

An action drama/weepie that's so busy telling us that its characters are heroes, it forgets that they should be people first.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 1, 2004

In its determination to create a tribute, the filmmakers smooth too many edges and simplify too many complex emotions.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 1, 2004

Plays as if the filmmakers compiled a list of every smoke-eater clich imaginable and then resolutely set about crossing them off.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Oct 1, 2004

A profile in everyday courage, the common denominator of men who fight fires for a living, choosing to go into buildings that other people are trying to get out of.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 1, 2004

An imperfect but deeply affecting movie about the unadorned heroism of working-class firefighters.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 1, 2004

The kind of sentimental cash grab that can make a red-blooded gal feel cynical and depressed not just about Hollywood, but America in general.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Oct 1, 2004

What it has is a tired narrative frame ... a lost ensemble cast, no depth of character and a series of situations taken straight from the land of obvious.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Oct 1, 2004

It may be years before any writer makes an on-screen firefighter into a loser, let alone a villain. In the meantime, Ladder 49 will stoke the embers on all of our firefighter daydreams.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 1, 2004

The best compliment I can pay Ladder 49 is to say that it left me feeling thoughtful and sad.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 1, 2004

As more than one character reminds us, these are men who run into burning buildings when you and I are busy running out. All the boilerplate in Hollywood can't change that.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 1, 2004