 Some critics obviously believe that Ladder 49 should be tossed into a bonfire. John Anderson writes that the film may be "bearable only to people in deep mourning and vulnerable to emotional coercion. Which is, of course what makes the whole thing so distasteful." Megan Lehmann in the New York Post comments: "The tedious and obnoxiously manipulative Ladder 49 plays as if the filmmakers compiled a list of every smoke-eater cliché imaginable and then resolutely set about crossing them off." Carrie Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer grants that it might be intended as a "heartfelt tribute" to firefighters; however, she adds, it winds up being "a series of Hallmark-card platitudes, not a human portrait." Leah McLaren in the Toronto Globe and Mail is downright outraged by the plot. "It's no big secret that movies are a business, but every once in a while one comes along that is so shameless in its effort to exploit public sympathy in the name of box-office returns you feel can't help but feel emotionally conned at the end of it," she writes. On the other hand, Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal calls it "an honorable film, for all its faults, and its calculations seem less opportunistic than opportune." Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times is also willing to give the movie an A for effort, writing: "As a loving tribute to the courage and sacrifice of firefighters, it's first-class. As a movie, it's a TV show. Still, it's always hard to criticize a film that wraps itself in the woolly blanket of real people's heroism. It's meant to be a homage, and it plays like one." |
