But the overall philosophy was to make it as real as possible. That proved very useful for certain sequences. We did build a forest on a backlot, which was lined with propane, so we could have a controllable forest fire that we could turn on or off. We shot with real fire whenever we could do it safely. It was shot in New Mexico, outside of Santa Fe. There's very, very little stage work and almost no blue screen in this movie. Kosinski wanted to make his depiction of the events depicted feel real, so as he explained to GQ, all involved did as much in-camera as possible for the film: My approach was really to try to get as much in camera whenever possible, and try to shoot real fire whenever possible, and to shoot the movie on location as much as possible. He seems be honoring the Granite Mountain Hotshots, not making a thriller or an action movie out of what happened, as early trade reports indicated. While Kosinski's last two movies aren't particularly emotional (which is fine for what they are), Only the Brave is clearly a far more human story for the filmmaker.

Only the brave cast granite mountain