Still-frame image of Kurt Russell in Backdraft (1991): Universal Pictures
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is part of of "MZS 30," a series of reprints that amount to a cross-section of Matt Zoller Seitz's thirty years as a film critic. They are reprinted in their entirety with introductions contextualizing them in their time and place, and critiquing them from the standpoint of where the writer is today.
Thirty years ago this week, the firefighting action movie "Backdraft" opened. I had just started my first professional journalism job at
Dallas Observer, a weekly newspaper in my hometown of Dallas. "Backdraft" was the first paid review I ever wrote.