
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. Brendan insists that he should be taken to the school and enters the gymnasium. The devastated families of the hotshots gather at Prescott Middle School, where they hear reports of a lone survivor of the twenty firefighters. Brendan hears the radio call from the first helicopter to reach the site: all 19 crew members are confirmed dead. As the fire sweeps over the crew, multiple radio calls go unanswered. The tanker misses the crew, and they deploy their compact personal fire shelters. The crew clears a small site, and Eric calls in an air tanker to douse the rapidly advancing fire front. The fire picks up speed and jumps the safe zone, continuing towards the crew and cutting off their escape route. The rest of the crew head to a safe zone after realizing that the fast-moving fire is too intense. When the wind suddenly intensifies and shifts, Brendan is rescued by another hotshot crew, and they evacuate to the mobile headquarters. The crew now has to relocate, so Eric sends Brendan to higher ground as a lookout. The crew begins a counterattack to contain the fire, but an air tanker mistakes it for a secondary fire, and extinguishes it. Eric tells Brendan that he will help him secure a transfer so that he can spend more time with his family. Walking into the fire zone, Eric apologizes to Brendan for snapping at him.

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. The Granite Mountain Hotshots are called to the next wildfire. Eric has a heartfelt talk with Duane and returns home to tell Amanda he's ready to start a family.

Eric, a recovering addict himself, argues with Amanda about his attitude towards Brendan's sense of priorities, and his reluctance to start a family. 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. Brendan later approaches Eric about transferring to a structural firefighting crew. While he recovers in the hospital, Brendan's mother suggests that he should reconsider his career for his daughter's sake. The crew fights several fires, including saving a historic juniper tree where Brendan is bitten by a rattlesnake while walking a fire line. Natalie begins to accept Brendan and lets him spend time with their daughter. They pass and become the Granite Mountain Hotshots. The crew trains hard and is finally deployed to a wildfire for evaluation. 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. When he is arrested for larceny, his mother kicks him out of the house. His ex-girlfriend Natalie is pregnant with his baby, but she feels that he is too irresponsible to be in her life. This frustrates Eric's wife Amanda, who resents how the time commitment already keeps Eric from wanting to start a family.īrendan McDonough is unemployed and abuses drugs. Duane warns that no other municipal crew in the country has that status and they will have to commit to a longer working season. Eric speaks to fire chief Duane Steinbrink regarding his desire for Crew 7 to become certified hotshots. The fire behaves as Eric anticipated, and the neighborhood is destroyed. 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 film is dedicated to the Granite Mountain Hotshots and their families.Įric Marsh, superintendent of Fire and Rescue Crew 7 in Prescott, Arizona, receives a call to a wildfire. However, it received positive reviews, with praise for the cast and the film's touching tribute to its subjects. The film was a box-office bomb, grossing just $26.3 million worldwide against a $38 million budget. Only the Brave was released by Columbia Pictures in North America and by Summit Entertainment in other territories on October 20, 2017. Principal photography began in New Mexico in June 2016.

It features an ensemble cast, including Josh Brolin, James Badge Dale, Jeff Bridges, Miles Teller, Alex Russell, Taylor Kitsch, Ben Hardy, Thad Luckinbill, Geoff Stults, Scott Haze, Andie MacDowell, and Jennifer Connelly. The film tells the story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, an elite crew of firefighters from Prescott, Arizona who lost 19 of 20 members while fighting the Yarnell Hill Fire in June 2013, and is dedicated to their memory. Only the Brave is a 2017 American biographical drama film directed by Joseph Kosinski, and written by Ken Nolan and Eric Warren Singer, based on the GQ article "No Exit" by Sean Flynn.
