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 ...

Joaquin Phoenix stars in last year's solid action hit about a firefighter whose career plays out in flashbacks while he's trapped inside a burning building. John Travolta co-stars as the mentor who ...

In the opening scene, fireman Jack Morrison (Joaquin Phoenix) and other members of Ladder 49 enter a huge burning building. Conflagration has engulfed the edifice and the men search, eventually ...