Hotshot

“If you were to piss test a hot shot, you’d find 70% energy drinks and 30% tobacco,” Kirkpatrick Mann explains. He should know. His girlfriend is one, the only girl in the Texas Canyon Hotshots that this film follows. A latter-day Calamity Jane, duskily pretty and laced with tattoos, she is introduced with a corny but spectacular freeze-frame needle-drop of her rescuing her crew with some high-speed driving between walls of flame. 

This is a great cast. This makes it all the more concerning that they work for a government that seems not to know how to support them. The film has quite a payload in the form of a potent explanation of wildfire, its management, and mismanagement. I’ll leave it to you as to what you make of it all. But I will never look at those air drops of water the same again. Above and away from where it is useful, the waste is one of the more rage-inducing examples of government mismanagement I’ve seen. 

Kirkpatrick Mann lenses this thing beautifully. It took immense effort to capture this footage, and thankfully, his photography is well up to the task. These are great images. Piles of well-worn gear are filmed with the reverence of mountains. Crews advance like mutant platoons, chainsaws slung over their shoulders in place of rifles. The drama and the slog of it all are captured well, and Kirkpatrick Mann’s embedding within a crew provides the knowledge and stamina to get as close to the infernos as possible, making his luscious depiction of fire unmatchable on screen anywhere.

“Mann lenses this thing beautifully. It took immense effort to capture this footage…”

Hotshot is terrific. And I wondered why it wasn’t a more high-profile release. Kirkpatrick Mann tells the story well and has the most intimate ties with the material possible. But this film could have won an A-list Hollywood narrator with a bit of searching and a tweak to the delivery of this adventure. Causes are catnip in Hollywood, and here is one that anyone would be proud to get behind. Also, aren’t these fires an existential issue to the residents of Beverly Hills? 

As it is, Kirkpatrick Mann’s first-person voiceover feels like it needs a polish here and there, with the sound mixing occasionally unclear on my copy. That’s a minor issue with an otherwise vital first-hand account of work that needs to be appreciated. But you can’t help but wonder how much further into a mainstream hit this could have been pushed if Mann had finessed or shared out the load of the production, perhaps with graphics, maps, and more titles to really nail the legitimacy of this as a document. My fear here is he provides an opportunity for detractors on this contentious issue to accuse it of polemics.

The credits reinforce the impression that more has been bitten off than can be chewed. Why weren’t they more diligent in recording the people on screen? The Texas Canyon Hotshots see lots of action, being deployed all over the Americas. And people undoubtedly come and go, but their credit at the end was brief, and it’s jarring none of them were named personally. 

I can appreciate it’s probably impossible to list all of the technicians who appear on the screen during the mayhem, and to omit some over others would be unforgivable, but more detail on the crews and when and where they were filmed would have been appropriate. It seems every day for them is a battle, and Kirkpatrick Mann owes it to them to record things in that spirit.

As such, may I reveal that the absolute madman who makes at least 100 bucks from his bored crew mates by chugging a carton of rotten milk is called Gallo. Gallo, we salute you.