Nevertheless, the group is officially certified at last and the newly dubbed Granite Mountain Hotshots quickly establish themselves in a series of fires, even becoming local heroes when they help save a cherished tree from a nearby blaze.

Ironically, it is Marsh who almost blows it for the group during their evaluation when he elects to utilize a risky maneuver to combat a fire. To take Brendan on at this time seems like an enormous mistake, as fellow firefighter Christopher McKenzie ( Taylor Kitsch) is constantly reminding him, but Marsh sees something in McDonough that inspires him to take that risk. As the group begins to train for this, they take on a new recruit in Brendan McDonough ( Miles Teller), a local screw-up who decides to finally get off drugs and become responsible after learning that his ex-girlfriend is pregnant.

Eventually, local wildland division chief Duane Steinbrink ( Jeff Bridges) gets them in position to finally get an official evaluation. For now, they are merely part of the second wave that has to look on while the hotshots get to do all the real work, even if they have a better idea of the terrain and how the fire might turn in an instant than the top dogs. As the story begins, a team from the small town of Prescott, Arizona, under the leadership of chief Eric Marsh ( Josh Brolin) is trying to get certified, a feat that would make them the country’s first municipal hotshot squad. “Hotshots,” the film explains upfront, are an elite group of forest firefighters who are specially trained and certified to go into on-fire areas and establish a controlled fire line that the approaching inferno cannot cross.

How to watch only the brave