The Big Picture

  • Backdraft was a massive success and pop culture phenomenon in 1991, but it has since faded from our collective memory.
  • The film is a superficially satisfying pastiche of popular genre tropes, but it doesn't excel in any particular area except for its impressive pyrotechnics.
  • The movie's hero worship of firefighters is overbearing and problematic, with the characters making questionable decisions to preserve the public's trust in them. The portrayal of firefighters as infallible heroes undermines the film's other elements.

More than 30 years ago, Backdraft was the biggest movie in the world. Or at least it seemed that way to an 8-year-old kid like me who religiously watched primetime television and saw an endless stream of Backdraft commercials declaring this fact to be the sovereign truth of the land. Ron Howard’s effects-driven action thriller follows estranged brothers Stephen and Brian McCaffery (Kurt Russell and William Baldwin, respectively), two firefighters who must contend with their own bitter rivalry as they try to catch a serial arsonist cleverly utilizing the titular phenomenon to murder victims in spectacular fashion. It’s a pure popcorn film stuffed with enough melodrama to make it eligible for a Daytime Emmy.

I was almost relieved to learn that the film legitimately was a massive success, and that the pop culture pervasiveness of Backdraft in 1991 wasn’t just an artifact of my fallible memory. It nabbed a little over $150 million worldwide back when that was still impressive and earned three Oscar nominations for its jaw-dropping special effects. It also inspired an attraction at Universal Studios that stayed operational until 2010, at least two decades after anyone visiting the park would’ve had any idea what the hell Backdraft even was. It was a Whole Ass Thing, and like many Whole Ass Things of late, it completely vanished from the zeitgeist almost as quickly as a gas explosion caused by the sudden introduction of oxygen into an oxygen-depleted environment. Man, if only there were a snappier term for that phenomenon.

Why Didn't 'Backdraft' Stand the Test of Time?

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Image via Universal Pictures

Any time a Whole Ass Thing utterly disappears (such as Game of Thrones post-finale, or James Cameron’s Avatar), I instantly become completely fascinated with it. And with something like Backdraft, which had a literal monument in the form of a theme park attraction constructed in its honor, my fascination only increases. This is one reason why Kevin Costner’s Waterworld, which spawned the long-running Universal Studios Hollywood stunt show of the same name, will always be counted among the most important films I have ever seen. Dozens of major studio blockbusters are released every year, and most of them don’t get spun off into rides. So why make an attraction out of a Hollywood trivia question like Backdraft? Why didn’t this firefighting epic stand the test of time? What was it about this movie that made it The Biggest Thing Ever for a brief period in 1991 and so obscure in 2021 that I usually have to repeat the title? (“Backdrafter? Is that a racing movie?”)

After revisiting the movie for the first time in decades in celebration of its 30th anniversary, I can safely say that I have absolutely no idea how Backdraft managed to fade from our collective memory. Everyone on the planet should be discussing this film constantly because it is entirely out of its goddamned mind. Indeed, a Backdraft Blu-ray will soon be resting on my bookshelf next to my copy of Waterworld. And after meticulously freeze-framing every ludicrous moment to dictate notes that were delivered so excitedly that Siri frequently asked me to repeat myself, I think I’ve cracked the mystery of Backdraft’s staggeringly brief status as a Phenomenon with a capital P. It’s a superficially satisfying pastiche of appealing genre tropes that were popular at the time — it has the action spectacle of Lethal Weapon 2, the insider subculture of Days of Thunder, the tragic melodrama of Ghost, and even the cat-and-mouse suspense of The Silence of the Lambs. The problem is, apart from its impressive pyrotechnics, Backdraft doesn’t do any of those things particularly well.

'Backdraft' Is Hero Worship Gone Bad

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Image via Universal Pictures

One of the major things that sticks out during Backdraft’s slightly too long 137-minute runtime is that the movie is unabashed hero worship at its core. It treats firefighters like the unimpeachable avatars of public service to such a degree that it’s almost hard to believe it was released 10 years before 9/11 and not six months afterward. To wit, we ultimately discover that the serial arsonist is a veteran firefighter, who is upset with some crooked officials’ decision to close several firehouses in favor of building money-laundering community centers. This is undeniably despicable, but the decision to systematically incinerate the men responsible is at least twice as illegal. At the end of the movie, the main characters decide to cover up the murders to preserve the public’s trust in firefighters. Besides, the city officials were crooked, so murdering them is barely a crime in the first place, amirite? This is the triumphant note upon which Backdraft ends, and its frankly embarrassing deification of firefighters throughout colors everything else I’m about to discuss.

You can’t really fault Backdraft as an action film. In terms of authenticity, a firefighter buddy of mine once described the movie as “a joke” that he and his friends enjoy ironically. That said, it’s hard to care about the unrealistic depiction of a factory fire when it results in a ton of bitchin’ explosions and slo-mo action dives. The action sequences themselves are as well-staged as they are ridiculous, and it’s nearly impossible not to feel both terrified and hyped watching all the extremely real pyrotechnics turn each fire into a legitimate hellmouth inferno. However, Backdraft spends a lot of time waxing philosophically about how “fire is a living thing” that “eats, breathes, and hates,” and that “you have to love it a little” in order to defeat it. I’ve never put out a single fire in my entire life and I can tell that this is top-shelf bullshit bordering on the preposterous, but this is also the kind of make-believe “insider” gobbledygook that keeps audiences engaged.

The fire is treated like a monster, like the shark from Jaws. It has a “voice,” literally growling when it’s on the screen. It’s similar to Twister, another unexpected hit about a subculture of people “doing battle” with a devastating natural force, in which the tornadoes are handled as roaring beasts. The decision to portray the fire as a monster or a supernatural entity is effective in making the firefighting scenes scary and tense, but it brushes up against cheesy a whole lot, especially during the finale in which Brian heroically gallops to an out-of-control firehose to kind of save the day a little bit, sort of. Still, the action is generally thrilling, and it effectively conveys the idea that one small mistake can be catastrophic for these men.

ELATED: 'Waterworld' Isn’t a Good Movie, But I Can’t Stop Watching It

'Backdraft' Fails the Most in Its Non-Action Scenes

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Image via Universal Pictures

Where Backdraft utterly fails is in all the non-fire scenes, of which there are many. The rivalry between the two brothers is potentially interesting, but we’re not given too much meat to chew on, leaving the audience practically starving for Stephen’s overbearing nature and Brian’s petulant defiance to start making some logical sense. An opening prologue defines their relationship as being bound by the tragic death of their father, who is also played by Kurt Russell in a truly baffling decision that I will return to in a moment. The elder McCaffery brings Brian with him on a seemingly routine call at David Crosby’s apartment only to get dramatically immolated by a freak gas explosion right in front of Brian’s eyes. (I am in no way kidding — Brian’s dad dies trying to save David Crosby’s furniture.) A photographer dressed like a Muppeteer because this tragedy occurred in 1971 snaps a picture of Brian’s grief that becomes a Pulitzer Prize-winning Life magazine cover. That image has haunted Brian his entire life, and while we’re meant to understand that the photograph is a literal representation of the many ways in which Brian was stunted by his father’s shocking death, it is also extremely funny in ways Ron Howard could not possibly have intended.

Let me explain — the prologue sequence looks like a deleted scene from The Sandlot or Stand by Me. It’s meant to evoke the joyful innocence of childhood, with a practically moon-faced Brian looking up to both his brother and father with unquestioning devotion. So after watching young Brian, A.K.A. the happiest kid in the entire universe, gleefully hop into his dad’s fire truck and put on his dad’s helmet, we cannot help but burst into uncontrollable laughter when the tone of the sequence abruptly shifts from “the greatest summer ever” to “my dad has discovered new levels of being dead.” Seriously, Brian’s dad is ultra dead. His singed helmet clatters to the ground next to Brian’s tiny, tear-soaked feet. The punishment is so unexpectedly extreme that the scene plays like a spoof of a tragedy rather than the real thing.

The decision to have Kurt Russell play both the adult Stephen and Brian and Stephen’s father in the opening flashback becomes more unhinged the longer you think about it. I believe the intent is to further beat the audience over the head with the idea that Stephen felt like he had to take his father’s place, and that he has been crushed by the weight of that responsibility his whole life. But Backdraft is about how neither brother was able to escape their father’s shadow — Brian’s Life magazine portrait serves the same narrative function as putting a mustache on Kurt Russell and having him play McCaffery Sr. in the flashback. So why on earth wouldn’t you just cast a different actor to play their father? Why would their father be grown-up Stephen’s literal mustachioed twin? I understand that there’s a bit of “the same actor plays both Captain Hook and Mr. Darling in Peter Pan” behind this decision, but it’s jarring and strange here because Backdraft isn’t a fairy tale or a fable. It is an extremely literal story with all the blunt-force subtext of a bus accident, so we have to approach this casting decision on those terms. And buddy, from that standpoint it never gets anywhere near making any kind of sense. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ron Howard initially tried to have Kurt Russell and William Baldwin both play McCaffery Sr.

I mentioned The Silence of the Lambs earlier, and even though both films were in theaters at roughly the same time, you’d be forgiven in assuming that Backdraft was a shameless rip-off of the Oscar-winning thriller. The mystery of the serial arsonist is one of Backdraft’s primary hooks, so by definition it should be one of the film’s best constructed elements. This is very much not the case, as evidenced by the completely ridiculous character of Ronald Bartel (Donald Sutherland). Ronald is a career arsonist who acts as Backdraft’s Hannibal Lecter, using his criminal expertise to provide Brian with a key piece of information that cracks the case. Even ignoring the fact that Ronald is only in one other scene and doesn’t have any other impact on the plot, the clue he provides to justify his existence in this film is something that a fire inspector should’ve noticed immediately.

'Backdraft' Wastes Multiple Well-Known Actors

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Image via Universal Pictures

Let’s talk about that fire inspector. Robert De Niro plays Columbo, who in this film is disguised as inspector Don “Shadow” Rimgale. Casting De Niro to do a Peter Falk impression is a spirited decision, but his presence in the film is ultimately more baffling than delightful. He acts as yet another surrogate father for Brian during the film’s middle act, which incidentally contains all the best scenes. Rimgale is a no-nonsense detective (again, think Fire Marshal Columbo), who comes as close to demystifying the firefighting profession as Backdraft dares to get. He teaches Brian that firefighting isn’t a game, nor is it strictly the domain of heroes – regular-ass people put out these blazes, which are frequently started by regular-ass people. Rimgale provides a clinical coldness that Backdraft sorely needs to counterbalance its near-mythological adoration of its subject matter. Unfortunately, that aspect of his character disappears almost as quickly as it is introduced.

During one of his earlier scenes, we witness Rimgale sabotage Ronald’s parole hearing. Sutherland plays Ronald like a firebug straight out of central casting, a cartoonish maniac who loves fire so much he simply can’t resist celebrating the very idea of arson in front of the parole board after Rimgale presents him with a partially melted baby doll that was destroyed in one of his fires. We also learn that Rimgale himself was horribly injured rescuing Ronald from that same fire. The point is, Backdraft establishes that Rimgale has an extremely personal investment in catching arsonists, and of not allowing people to forget the (typically) unintended victims of the crime.

Rimgale vanishes for the film’s finale, only to return to make a decision that is so completely out of character I almost rewound the movie because I thought I’d missed something. Essentially, Rimgale helps Brian cover up the identity of the arsonist to protect the fire department’s reputation, even though said arsonist killed three people and left a rookie firefighter (and Brian’s friend) permanently scarred and disfigured. It’s a totally unearned and confusing decision that would never have been made by the Rimgale we met during Ronald’s parole hearing, and it only serves to further drag Backdraft down into borderline propagandic hero worship. Moreover, there’s absolutely no way that the laser-focused and detail-oriented Rimgale would’ve missed the vital clue Ronald provides them, which is that the chemical accelerant found at each arson scene is a chemical regularly used by firemen.

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Image via Universal Pictures

Amidst all this, Backdraft still finds a way to completely waste Jennifer Jason Leigh as a former flame of Brian’s who now works for the corrupt city officials. She’s barely a character but we get enough snapshots of her life to know that she was struggling to make ends meet just a few years prior. When Brian confronts her with the evidence that her boss is shady and asks her to steal some files for him, she understandably pushes back a bit by pointing out that this will probably destroy her career and send her right back to struggling. He guilts her into stealing them anyway, and the very last time we see her she bitterly hands over the files and says a terse, “Goodbye.” We never check back in with her, because she doesn’t matter. Only the firefighters matter in Backdraft. They are the only characters allowed to have flaws, or complicated professional politics to navigate, or really any nuance whatsoever except that nuance always disappears in favor of unquestioning adulation.

Backdraft has a number of glaring problems, as I’ve done my best to demonstrate without writing the kind of manifesto that inspires federal wiretaps. But all of them can be boiled down to its portrayal of firefighters. Imagine if everything else about the movie stayed exactly the same, except the firefighter characters were all changed to police officers. Firefighters may not carry the same (wholly justified) stigma as cops do, but fire departments are historically just as prone to corruption scandals as any other area of local government. It’s bizarre to treat anyone like an infallible symbol of heroism, but Backdraft goes to unprecedented lengths by asking us to overlook three brutal murders simply because they were committed by a firefighter who thought he was sticking up for the little guy. I can’t say whether this hastened its journey into obscurity after a brief reign as the most popular movie in the world, but what I can say is this — according to Backdraft, there are exactly two firefighters in the city of Chicago who have fanciful nicknames written across their backs, and 50% of them is the arsonist.

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