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 ...

While growing up in Australia, actress Jacinda Barrett had a frightening brush with death when she got caught in the pull of a powerful ocean wave and nearly drowned. But the 33-year-old stunner ...

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 ...