While Sept. 11 helped embellish the already heroic image of firefighters, "Ladder 49" doesn't owe any direct debt to such recent events. It plays, rather, like an old-fashioned, by-the-numbers drama ...

Actor Tim Guinee didn't want to leave the fire service behind after filming "Ladder 49," so he took on the role of a firefighter in real life. Guinee joined his hometown Stone Ridge Volunteer Fire ...

After watching “Ladder 49,” you will never complain about moving to the side of the road to make room for a fire truck. The new movie is the most polished of recruiting films. But that doesn’t mean it ...

The old downtown hospital in Annapolis is on the verge of getting star treatment. An all-but-finalized deal would open the vacant Anne Arundel Medical Center for use in the movie "Ladder 49," starring ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. They are willing to lay their time, energy and lives on the line to protect the property and ...

One of the most enduring images in the weeks and months after Sept. 11, 2001, centered on the cleanup at the wreckage of the World Trade Center towers at Ground Zero. As the tons of debris were ...

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 brought firefighters a long-overdue surge in appreciation and acknowledgement. As heroes of the moment, firefighters (and, to a lesser extent, Dalmatians) basked in the ...

The problem with this film is that it's hardly a film, more an extended promo for the American firemen. And any advertisement stretching on for two hours will always be a bit too hard to take. Of ...

When you make a movie like “Ladder 49,” about the day-to-day lives of firemen, almost anything you do runs the risk of being exploitative. It’s hard to know the right way — or even if there is a right ...

It's loud. It's noisy. It's downright cacophonous. That being the case, I'm led to wonder if turning up the volume is a director's ploy to draw an audience's attention away from corny melodrama. Is ...