Only the Brave (2017 film)

Eric Marsh, superintendent of Fire and Rescue Crew 7 in Prescott, Arizona, receives a call to a wildfire. Due to Crew 7's status as municipal firefighters, Eric's prediction that the fire will threaten a nearby neighborhood is ignored by a hotshot crew from California. The fire behaves as Eric anticipated, and the neighborhood is destroyed.

Eric's wife Amanda suggests that he should talk to Duane Steinbrink, the town's fire chief, to complete Crew 7's certification as wildfire hotshots. Duane warns that the crew will now have to commit to a longer working season. This frustrates Amanda, who resents how the time commitment already keeps Eric from wanting to start a family.

Brendan McDonough is unemployed, listless, and abuses drugs. His ex-girlfriend Natalie is pregnant with his baby, but she feels that he is too irresponsible to be in her life. When he is arrested for larceny, his mother kicks him out of the house. When his daughter is born, he wants to provide for her, so he interviews with Eric, who hires him despite the reservations of some of the crew.

The crew trains hard and is finally deployed to a wildfire for evaluation. They pass and become the Granite Mountain Hotshots. Natalie begins to accept Brendan and lets him spend time with their daughter.

The crew fights several fires, including saving a historic juniper tree, but Brendan is bitten by a rattlesnake while walking a fire line. While he recovers in the hospital, his mother suggests that Brendan should reconsider his career for his daughter's sake. Brendan later approaches Eric about transferring to a different station within the department, joining a structural firefighting crew. Eric snaps, suggesting that Brendan’s criminal past makes a transfer nearly impossible, and that he will return to drugs without the purpose being a hotshot provides.

Eric and Amanda argue about Eric's attitude towards Brendan's sense of priorities, and his reluctance to start a family. Eric has a heartfelt talk with Duane, apologizes to Brendan and then returns home and tells Amanda he's ready to start a family.

The Granite Mountain Hotshots are called to the next wildfire, thirty miles from Prescott. Traveling to the area, Eric tells his second-in-command Jesse that he will be stepping down and will appoint Jesse as the superintendent in the near future. Walking into the fire zone, Eric tells Brendan that he will help him secure a transfer so that he can spend more time with his family.

The crew begins a counterattack to contain the fire, but an air tanker mistakes it for a secondary fire, and extinguishes it. The crew now has to relocate, so Eric sends Brendan to higher ground as a lookout. When the wind suddenly intensifies and shifts, Brendan is rescued by another hotshot crew, and they evacuate to the mobile fire headquarters. The rest of the Granite Mountain Hotshots head to a designated safe zone after realizing that the fast-moving fire is too intense to go up against.

The fire picks up speed and jumps the safe zone, continuing towards the Granite Mountain Hotshots and cutting off their escape route. The crew clears a small site, and Eric calls in an air tanker to douse the rapidly advancing fire front. The tanker misses the crew, and they deploy their compact personal fire shelters. As the fire sweeps over the crew, multiple radio calls go unanswered. Brendan hears the radio call from the first helicopter to reach the site: all 19 crew members are confirmed perished.

The devastated families of the hotshots gather at Prescott Middle School, where they hear reports of a lone survivor of the twenty firefighters. Brendan insists that he should be taken to the school and enters the gymnasium. Upon seeing Brendan, knowing that he was one of the hotshots, they realize that he is the only one who survived, and that their loved ones have perished. As they grieve, Brendan storms out of the gym and has a psychological breakdown, where Amanda consoles him, all the while Brendan saying that he should’ve died alongside them.

Three years later, Brendan takes his daughter to the juniper tree that was saved by the crew. During the credits, photos are shown of the actual Granite Mountain Hotshots and their actor counterparts.

On March 1, 2016, Josh Brolin and Miles Teller joined the cast of the film.[6] Jeff Bridges and Taylor Kitsch later also joined the cast.[7] The film was produced under the working title Granite Mountain. Principal photography on the film began in New Mexico on June 13, 2016. Filming took place at different locations in and around Santa Fe and Los Alamos.[8][9][10]

Joseph Trapanese composed the film's score. Dierks Bentley released a single called "Hold The Light", featuring S. Carey. The single and the music video was released on October 6, 2017.[11]

Only the Brave, originally titled Granite Mountain, was released on October 20, 2017, by Sony Pictures Releasing under its Columbia Pictures label. Before that the film was set a release date for September 22, 2017, but a disagreement between Lionsgate and production company Black Label Media saw the U.S. distribution rights change to Columbia Pictures.[12] Summit Entertainment will retain international rights in select countries for the film.[13] The trailer came out on July 19, and the film was retitled Only the Brave.[14] The film was released digitally on January 23, 2018, and on DVD and Blu-ray on February 6, 2018. As of December 2018, it had made $7.2 million in home video sales.[15]

• Official website
• Only the Brave at IMDb 
• Only the Brave at AllMovie
• Only the Brave. History vs. Hollywood.