Backdraft, which opened 18 years ago this week, on May 24, 1991, remains to this day the highest-grossing film ever made about firefighters -- which is a pretty dubious distinction, if you think about it. How many other films about firefighters can you even name? There was Ladder 49 in 2004, and Frequency in 2000. What else ... Firehouse Dog? Backdraft's $77.9 million haul wasn't even enough to make it among the 10 biggest films of 1991 (it was 14th), yet it was enough to put it at the top of the very short list of firefighter movies.

Which leads to an obvious question: Why aren't there more movies about firefighters? Every little boy goes through a phase where he wants to be a fireman when he grows up. The job is inherently full of danger and excitement. It lends itself easily to heroism and tragedy. If that's not the stuff of a Hollywood blockbuster, I don't know what is.

My theory is that firefighters suffer from Superman Syndrome. They're do-gooders, all the time, and there isn't anyone who doesn't like them. Cops, doctors, and other theoretically noble professions are subject to corruption and abuse of power. Cops protect us from criminals, but they also write speeding tickets. The films about crooked cops must number in the hundreds. Doctors save lives, but they also collude with greedy insurance companies and make you sit in the waiting room for an hour past your appointment time. Plenty of people scowl when a police car drives past. But when a fire engine goes by, you think: Those guys are on their way to do something brave! And where's the drama in that?

As FX's outstanding series Rescue Me has shown, the drama is not in the character of firefighters in general -- when was the last time you heard of crooked firemen taking bribes? -- or in the dangerous situations they face on a daily basis, but in the demons they face within themselves. Firefighting itself is cool, but from a storytelling standpoint it's too simple. With cops, there's often a question of whether a crime has even been committed, let alone how to deal with it. But it's usually pretty clear whether something is on fire, and if it is, well, you put it out. (The mechanics of how you extinguish a fire, and the different strategies involved with different kinds of blazes, would probably be too technical for the average viewer to be interested in them.) So the smart move is to focus on the men and women who do the fighting, not on the fighting itself.

Backdraft basically follows these principles, with a few spectacularly well-made firefighting sequences thrown in for good measure. The focus is on the characters, and primarily on two brothers, Stephen (Kurt Russell) and Brian (William Baldwin), whose father was a fireman killed in the line of duty. Now they squabble as they work side-by-side in a Chicago firehouse. Stephen is a lifelong firefighter whose devotion to the job (and to alcohol) has made him an unfit husband. Brian, who witnessed his dad's death, has floated from job to job before finally finishing fire academy and joining his brother.

Two brothers, one stalwart and one prodigal, facing a problem together -- it may be the stuff of a thousand stories already, but it's rife with conflict, and it offers many dramatic, comic, and tragic possibilities. Backdraft (which was written by ex-fireman Gregory Widen, who also wrote Highlander) doesn't have enough confidence in that drama, though, and adds a ludicrous plot about a serial arsonist using a fictional chemical to create carefully controlled fires as a means of killing specific people. Not only is this goofy, but it takes Brian forever to figure out that the arsonist must be a firefighter, and even then it's only after it's explained to him by the imprisoned arsonist (Donald Sutherland) he goes to for help, Hannibal Lecter-style. (Backdraft came out three months after Silence of the Lambs, by the way.)

But you can see why it was a hit. Coming out on Memorial Day Weekend, it offered holiday moviegoers some action in a genre that had not already been done to death, dealing with characters in a vaguely noble, even patriotic setting. The heroes and villains are easy to suss out, and the lines are clearly drawn: Director Ron Howard has rarely made a film with much gray area, and this was no exception. It doesn't hold up particularly well now -- I'm not sure it held up very well at the time, either -- but it works as the sort of movie you can watch for a while if you stumble across it while flipping channels. In the meantime, firefighters await the quintessential movie that will really tell their stories in a brilliant, timeless fashion.

FROM THE TIME CAPSULE: When Backdraft was released, 18 years ago this week, on May 24, 1991...

• It was absurdly busy at the box office, even for Memorial Day Weekend. Backdraft opened in first place, followed by the previous weekend's champ, What About Bob? Then there were five more brand-new films in the top 10: Hudson Hawk, Thelma and Louise, Only the Lonely, Drop Dead Fred, and Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken.

• On TV, Dinosaurs and Sisters had just premiered, while Dallas and thirtysomething had just aired their final episodes.

• The No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart was Mariah Carey's "I Don't Wanna Cry," replacing Hi-Five's "I Like the Way (The Kissing Game)." Paula Abdul's "Rush Rush" and Bryan Adams' "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" were about to be major summertime hits.

• A week earlier, Queen Elizabeth II had addressed the United States Congress -- the first British monarch ever to do so.

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"Eric's Time Capsule" appears every week on Film.com. You can visit Eric at his website, which is not flammable.

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