

Station 7 was the building where the Granite Mountain hotshots worked, trained and hung out. In real life, McDonough never mentioned a snakebite nor a stay in the hospital in the days leading up to the Yarnell fire.

#Lone peak hot shots movie#
The movie shows the crew working on the Doce Fire - which did happen in real life, shortly before Yarnell - and then shows McDonough being bitten by a rattlesnake. In the movie, he lands in the hospital, where he has to recover. Not quite: Did Brendan McDonough get bitten by a rattlesnake? Later, he is shown stealing a GPS unit from a vehicle in Prescott and then on the phone from jail trying to raise bail money.Īll are events from his life. McDonough first appears in the film sitting on a couch with a buddy and a bong, stoned out of his mind. Marsh's past troubles with substance abuse is referenced, part of an attempt to connect him with McDonough (Miles Teller). The movie pulls no punches in depicting the challenges of at least two crew members. True: Darker sides of Eric Marsh, Brendan McDonough Some among the crew, though, were in their first or second season.Īlmost nobody on the crew had been there the duration of the team's existence. In reality, the turnover on the team, both before and after it was certified as an interagency hotshot crew, was frequent, as is the case on most wildland crews.Ī few team members had been on for many seasons. The film also suggests the hotshots were together for longer than they actually were. Not quite: How long the firefighters were together And the team did later work on the 2011 Horseshoe 2 Fire in southern Arizona, as depicted in the movie. The real-life crew had worked for years before becoming certified as an elite "Type 1" crew in 2008. The movie opens on the 2005 Cave Creek Complex Fire north of Phoenix and suggests that experiences there motivated Eric Marsh to certify his then-Type 2 wildland firefighting crew as an elite crew of hotshots. But most of those are background characters. More: The Granite Mountain Hotshots and the stars who play them in 'Only the Brave'Įvery member of the 20-man crew has a real actor playing him in the credits list.

Taylor Kitsch as Chris MacKenzie, a member of the crew.James Badge Dale as Jesse Steed, the crew's captain and one of its longest-serving members.He was posted as a lookout away from the rest of the crew on the day of the fire. Miles Teller as Brendan McDonough, the only surviving hotshot.Josh Brolin as Eric Marsh, the leader of the hotshot crew.The real Granite Mountain Hotshots and others are played one-for-one by actors including: The Wildland Firefighter Guardian Institute, a group founded by three surviving relatives of real-life hotshots - the widow and the mother of hotshot Andrew Ashcraft and the widow of hotshot William Warneke - issued a statement challenging the film's historical accuracy. In other parts of the story, it's hit or miss.Įven before the movie's debut, some of the family members of the firefighters raised concerns about the film's depiction of events. The depiction of the crew's final day together matches the records from the fire investigation, interviews with some of the people involved and a book by the fire crew's sole survivor, Brendan McDonough (played by Miles Teller). When it comes to what counts - the events of the Yarnell Hill Fire itself - "Only the Brave" sticks to the facts. But if you're hoping to avoid learning about specific plot twists in "Only the Brave," proceed with caution. The hotshots' fate was well documented at the time. The film's ending probably doesn't require a spoiler alert.

It is, as the trailer says, "based on true events."īut how accurate is the movie about the Yarnell Hill Fire and what happened before it? "Only the Brave," the movie starring Josh Brolin, Jeff Bridges and Miles Teller, tells the story - one version of it, anyway - of Arizona's Granite Mountain Hotshots.
