Taglines: Silently behind a door, it waits.
Backdraft movie storyline. At a Chicago city firehouse in 1971, a young boy and his even younger brother are trying on a fireman’s coat. The older boy, Steven McCaffrey, lectures his brother, Brian, on how to properly buckle the front so it won’t open in a hazardous situation. Just then, the alarm goes off in the firehouse and their father rushes in, asking Brian if he wants to join them on the call. Brian does and his father takes him in the fire engine with him. He shows his son how to properly blow the engine’s horn to clear the streets and intersections on their way to the site.
When they arrive on site, the call is for an apartment building. Brian watches as his father quickly makes his way up to the top floor where the blaze is. He and his partner, John “Axe” Adcox, rescue a kid about Brian’s age and give him to their cohorts waiting on a nearby ladder. McCaffrey and Axe continuing battling the fire when a gas line ruptures and the entire floor explodes, killing McCaffrey.
Brian watches his father’s helmet land in front of him on the street. Axe, pushed away from the explosion by McCaffrey, rushes out and hugs Brian, then appears to bark orders to the rest of the company. Brian is stunned and picks up his father’s helmet just as a photographer snaps a picture of him. (The picture later becomes a prize-winning cover of Life magazine.)
Twenty years later, in the present day, Brian is at a party being thrown at a local bar; he has just graduated from a firefighter’s training academy and the class is celebrating. He and his friend, Tim, are also waiting for their station assignments. Tim is given Engine 17, the toughest company in the city. Brian’s own assignment is elsewhere because he’d bribed the city fire chief.
Brian doesn’t want to work for 17 because his older brother, Steven, runs the house and the two have become estranged. At the party, Brian also meets up with his old girlfriend, Jennifer, who isn’t very happy to see him; Brian has hardly made any effort to keep in touch with her or his family for several years. Tim interrupts them, saying that 17 has been sent on a nearby call and that they both should go and watch their comrades work.
Moments before, after parking his Porsche in front of his house, a man named Seagrave is entering his house when he’s consumed by a huge explosion that propels him back into the street and through the windshield of his own car. When Brian and time make it to the site, the fire is already out and Brian’s brother and Axe are there, bragging about the completed job.
Backdraft is a 1991 American drama thriller film directed by Ron Howard and written by Gregory Widen. The film stars Kurt Russell, William Baldwin, Scott Glenn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Rebecca De Mornay, Donald Sutherland, Robert De Niro, Jason Gedrick and J. T. Walsh. It is about Chicago firefighters on the trail of a serial arsonist.
The film grossed $77.9 million domestically and $74.5 million in foreign markets, for a total gross of $152.4 million, making it the highest-grossing film ever made about firefighters. The film received three Academy Award nominations.
Backdraft (1991)
Directed by: Ron Howard
Starring: Kurt Russell, William Baldwin, Scott Glenn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Rebecca De Mornay, Donald Sutherland, Robert De Niro, Jason Gedrick, Juan Ramírez
Screenplay by: Gregory Widen
Production Design by: Albert Brenner
Cinematography by: Mikael Salomon
Film Editing by: Daniel P. Hanley, Mike Hill
Costume Design by: Jodie Lynn Tillen
Set Decoration by: Garrett Lewis
Art Direction by: Carol Winstead Wood
Music by: Hans Zimmer
MPAA Rating: R for language and a scene of sensuality.
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Release Date: May 24, 1991
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