There really haven't been that many movies about firemen. So why does "Ladder 49" feel like we've seen it all before?

Yes, it's different from "Backdraft." No crazed arsonist mystery, no weird voodoo about fire having a mind of its own. "Ladder's" admirable intention is to foreground the day-to-day lives of these everyday heroes, show their loves and personal conflicts and how they relate to one another.

But the guys don't seem very distinctive. As I recall, the "Backdraft" boys, like the men who man Baltimore trucks in this one, were fun-loving family men, overwhelmingly Irish Catholic, constantly busting one another's chops but willing to sacrifice their lives for one another, and very into rituals - weddings, birthdays and, sadly but with great pageantry, funerals. Can't say that I've seen this a lot of times on screen, but I can point out that it seems very generic.

That's partly because the only firefighter whom the movie really tells us anything about is Joaquin Phoenix's Jack Morrison - and we don't learn all there is to know about him. We first see him rescuing a civilian from a burning grain elevator, inside which he is soon trapped after falling several floors. While his colleagues struggle courageously to get to Jack in time, he thinks back on his life.

Which began, at least in the flashbacks, with his first day at the firehouse, where caring Capt. Mike Kennedy (John Travolta) and the boys subject Jack to a little good-natured hazing but an otherwise warm welcome. We follow Jack through literal baptisms by fire, as he learns bravery, caution and an invaluable sense of camaraderie.We also see him pick up hot babe Linda (MTV "Real World" escapee Jacinda Barrett, who in real life is the daughter of an Australian fireman) in a grocery store. Once she proves she can handle herself with the gang at the pub, Jack dutifully marries her, they have a couple of kids, and she frets about his survival. He's torn between his family's concerns and the fact that he's really good at saving lives, period - no ego, adrenalin high or self-pity involved. And he feels very bad whenever a fellow fireman is hurt, or worse.Nothing wrong with any of that, of course. Those are probably the main issues in most firemen's lives, and we didn't need the 9/11 example to know that they are well worth honoring and respecting. But wouldn't it have been even more respectful to give Morrison - and certainly the other firemen played by Travolta, Robert Patrick, Morris Chestnut, Balthazar Getty, Billy Burke and Jay Hernandez - more distinguishing personality traits, behavioral peculiarities, foibles and interests? You don't have to go as far into dysfunction as fireman's son Denis Leary's "Rescue Me" TV series to make this movie's characters more complete.What "Ladder 49" does show us fairly well are the dirty, scary and very well-thought-out details of firefighting. Director Jay Russell ("My Dog Skip") insisted on using live on-set fire rather than postproduction special effects for the burning sequences (extra smoke was added with computer graphics), and knowing that does add urgency to some of those scenes. It also forces the filmmakers to stay on the real side of spectacular, which is an admirable if not exactly super cinematic thing.What really would have gotten us more into the experience, though, would have been a script that delved deeper beneath the firefighters' helmets.