The Travolta/Cage Project #74: Ladder 49 (2004)
The Travolta/Cage Project is an ambitious, years-long multi-media exploration of the fascinating, overlapping legacies of Face/Off stars John Travolta and Nicolas Cage with two components: this online column exploring the actor’s complete filmographies in chronological order and the Travolta/Cage podcast, where Clint Worthington, myself and a series of fascinating guests discuss the movies I write about here.
Read previous entries in the column here, listen to the podcast here, pledge to the Travolta/Cage Patreon at this blessed web address and finally follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/travoltacage
For John Travolta, the 2004 firefighter melodrama Ladder 49 was an uninspired choice but more than anything it’s a boring choice. Even more than Phenomenon, this is some straight down the middle, VH-1, Dad Afternoon bullshit.
Ladder 49 accomplishes the seemingly impossible feat of making Joaquin Phoenix boring. The Academy Award winner is so utterly riveting playing tormented loners and losers who are profoundly fucked in the head—with the notable exception of his abysmal turn in Joker—that it seems perverse to cast him as a normal guy who just wants to be there for his wife and children and make a positive impact on society.
There are a few different ways movies about firefighters can go. They can depict firefighters as crazy, fearless motherfuckers who chase death and live on the edge or they can go the stickily sentimental route and portray them as selfless patriotic heroes who embody everything that is noble and right about our great nation.
To its detriment, Ladder 49 goes the bland and reverent route. Even the hijinks of its blaze-battling badasses are decidedly mild.
The purest of movie stars, Travolta seldom, if ever, feels the need to dial down his mega-watt magnetism because the characters he plays all share his bulldozing charm and likability.
Ladder 49 begins, for example, by illustrating that Travolta’s character is a real character in every sense. Joaquin Phoenix’s green rookie Jack Morrison enters the firehouse that Travolta’s Mike Kennedy rules benevolently and is surprised to see him seemingly semi-sloshed, day-drinking early in the morning and not wearing pants.
What a kook! What a nut! How devilishly unprofessional! What kind of a responsible authority figure is drunk and clad in boxers that early in the morning?
It all turns out to be a goof, however, just some cheeky shenanigans to razz the rookie. Other mild hazing rituals include tricking the new guy into thinking he’s confessing to a priest when he’s really just confessing to his professional colleagues and finally the old goose-in-the-locker routine.
Ladder 49 has a bifurcated narrative structure that alternates between a present when Phoenix’s noble firefighter is stuck in a burning building and terrified that he won’t make it out alive and flashbacks tracing our hero’s evolution from green, single neophyte to veteran husband and father with everything to lose.
Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes would not care for the scenes of Phoenix fighting for his life because they’re so murkily lit that it’s hard to tell what’s going on. That’s apparently a big thing with her.
That’s an innate shortcoming of movies about firefighters. The drama and danger and death and literal burning intensity of fires would seem to make them ideal for the big screen. Yet because a raging fire is going to burn out all other lights quickly, we’re left with inky blackness and fire and the occasional suffering soul trying to escape and that can be pretty damn boring visually.
Also boring? Our earnest hero’s journey through the world of firefighting and white-bread romance with Linda (Jacinda Barrett), a beautiful young woman he marries and has children with.
Ladder 49 follows Jack through a series of personal and professional milestones as he ambles lazily towards his destiny with a burning building that may very well be the death of him.
Even when he doesn’t intend to do so, Phoenix almost invariably conveys a dark and twisted inner life. That’s true here as well. Phoenix’s sick, sad smile and haunted eyes seem to convey that there’s something seriously wrong with him, that he’s fucking the fires he professes to fight or using fires to cover up the many murders he’s committing.
Nope. In Ladder 49, he’s just a really good guy who loves his wife and his children and his friends. That feels like a goddamn waste. Why cast someone with so much personality and weird energy if you’re not going to allow him to express anything that makes him special and unique?
One of the many weird commonalities of John Travolta and Nicolas Cage’s career is that they both worked with Joaquin Phoenix, one of the most exciting and electrifying actors around, in movies with absolutely nothing going for them, that completely squander the talents of some of the greatest actors in the history of film.
Ladder 49 rises to the level of mediocrity in a second half that narrows its focus and weaves together the film’s two threads by foregrounding Linda’s very understandable fear that her husband’s very dangerous job will cost him his life and rob her of a soulmate and their children of a father with scenes set in the present illustrating just how justified those fears are.
In its superior second half Ladder 49 grapples forthrightly with the tricky reality that the heroism, courage and selflessness that makes Linda love and admire her hero husband are also the qualities that make it horrifyingly possible that he will die a fiery, awful death in the line of duty.
Ladder 49 struck me as so timid and bland that I was legitimately surprised that (SPOILER) our protagonist does not, in fact, survive, despite having seen and reviewed the movie during its theatrical release.
Then again Ladder 49 plucks shamelessly at the heartstrings in its final act and it’s a lot easier to get people choked up and teary about a handsome hero who dies way too young than a guy who almost dies.
This mostly adequate basic cable fare relegates Travolta to a secondary role as the supportive and compassionate mentor. Phoenix is unmistakably the star here but Travolta gets his big moment to ACT when he delivers a eulogy for his late friend that doubles as a sincere valentine to the entire profession of fire-fighting.
I’m not going to lie: I got a little choked up at the end of Ladder 49, a movie whose ostensible lack of cynicism struck me as fairly cynical.
Ladder 49 isn’t bad so much as hopelessly dull. I’d rather watch a travesty overflowing with warped personality like Battlefield Earth a dozen times than have to suffer through this nothing-burger of a movie a second time.
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