You have to marvel at the crass exploitation inherent in a movie that exists to show a bunch of firefighters in one life-threatening situation after another. It doesn’t help that, in terms of tone and ...

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 ...