Hotshot (2023) is a film is absolutely rife with some of the most incredible footage of California wildfires, quite possibly ever taken. But it's not simply enough for a film to have distinctly stunning visuals. Hotshot opts to be a uniquely informative film that covers a lot of significant issues in the exploitation of committed and determined Hotshop crews (or as the FED calls them:"forestry technicians") who put their lives at risk weeks at a time to combat some of the most devastating wildfires in modern California history.
As someone who grew up under the smoke filled shadow of and studied California wildfires myself, I find this film quite honestly to be one of maybe only two genuinely authentic deep dive documentaries into California wildfires in a way that documentary should but rarely do. (Fun sidebar-- even without the filmmakers explicit acknowledgement of which fires he'd film for certain shots, I was often able to tell which fires he'd filmed simply based on the landscapes and fire behavior he'd film. Most of these fires were filmed in the devistating 2019-2020 fire season. Mad props for showing up to the Apple Fire in Banning back in August 2020, Gabriel Kirkpatrick Mann.)
There is however one aspect of the film i don't fully agree with and that is sort of the climate change denial that is occasionally sprinkled into the film. But I can't deny that while I may not agree with some of the climate aspects that this film occasionally presents, Hotshop very much makes up for that with countless far more informative hot takes on both the exploitation of hotshot crews by the US government, the reckless burn banning policies that has lead much of California to being in a decades-long burn-debt, and even exploitative nature of the media who rapaciously captures footage of wildfires for headlines regularly.
It's a film that operates much unlike the standard documentary formula. There are no interviews with any set of individuals andno redundant graphics or statistics. There are simply an insightful and emotional monologues by the films creator, Gabriel Kirkpatrick Mann, throughout as they personally shoot incredible footage of countless wildfires and the equally incredible men and women who push their bodies and souls to the limit to fight the beast hand to hand. These monologues are often introspective as much as they are a critique on the wildland fighting world and lend itself to this film having a spark of soul much like wildfires themselves. Definitely worth the watch and definitely worth seeing again.
