It’ll be available on DVD and Blu-Ray on Feb. Only the Brave is now available on digital HD for around $15 via Amazon, Google Play and the like. It’s that much harder to convince adults with jobs, kids, spouses and responsibilities to fork over money and time for a true-life where the entire reason for its existence is its well-known unhappy ending.

With more at-home entertainment options than ever before, much of it of equal/greater production value and with specifically adult sensibilities compared to the stereotypical Hollywood offering, movies like Only the Brave are the sort of movies that struggle and/or all-but require award seasons consideration to drum up any business. That’s not necessarily a case of moviegoers being indifferent or “evil” in terms of choosing to spend their time/money. Movies like Only the Brave are concurrently both the sort of thing we all complain Hollywood doesn’t make/release anymore and then more-or-less ignore when they do. And, yeah, despite strong reviews and a paid national sneak preview meant to build word-of-mouth, Only the Brave earned just $23 million worldwide on a $38m budget. Both Mark Wahlberg movies were relatively good, but both struggled as audiences either sought out feel-good true-life stories like Hidden Figures and Sully or escapism like La La Land and Rogue One. And I noted that Only the Brave was seen as a risk since it was similar in content and intentions to the two disappointing Peter Berg true-life tragedies Deepwater Horizon and Patriots Day. Because the other Black Label Media release to go from Lionsgate to Sony is Only the Brave, which was one of last year’s best movies.Īt the time, I noted that Lionsgate probably dumped Sicario 2 because they knew that an action thriller starring Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro sans Emily Blunt would struggle to stand out in the marketplace. However, if Soldado is any good, I’ll be the first to say so despite my misgivings. Like Snow White and the Huntsman, Sicario was a female-led genre film that was successful enough to spawn a sequel for the male co-star(s) with lead actress getting kicked to the curb. One of them was Sicario 2: Soldado, which I’ve given no end of grief for essentially being a sequel to Emily Blunt’s grim “War on Drugs” thriller without Blunt. There was a slight uproar earlier this year when Lionsgate unloaded two Black Label Media releases from their 2017 schedule, only for those films to get picked up by Sony.

Again, what makes the film stand out is the sheer quality of the writing and the time the picture allows to show these folks living, learning and changing before the proverbial end. In a departure for this kind of movie, the screenplay makes her into a three-dimensional human being, someone with opinions, contradictions and someone whose words and deeds have an impact on the plot. And the 'exclusive' clip above highlights one of its best elements, namely Connelly's terrific performance in what otherwise could have been a stock 'supportive wife' character.

Only the brave characters