In theaters

LADDER 49, directed by Jay Russell, written by Lewis Colick, 120 minutes, PG-13.

The new drama “Ladder 49” is about firefighters, and while it’s not set in New York City and never mentions the terrorist attacks that took place there, it’s impossible to view it without recalling the televised images of those who gave their lives by rushing into the World Trade Center.

The movie’s opening shot, after all, is of a towering building whose top explodes in billowing clouds of fire and smoke. Inside are firemen fighting to free trapped civilians, and eventually themselves, when the building starts to collapse. If that smells like opportunism to you, well, welcome to Hollywood.

Still, here’s the thing. In spite of the fact that a great deal of the film’s power is drawn from our memories of 9-11, there are other elements at work here that make “Ladder 49” a reasonably good, if predictable, meat-and-potatoes tearjerker.

As directed by Jay Russell from a script by Lewis Colick, the film is set in Baltimore, which is portrayed here as a close-knit community of working-class men and women who love each other almost as much as they love their pubs.

It stars Joaquin Phoenix as Jack Morrison, the young firefighter whose life is viewed in flashback after he lays trapped and wounded in the aforementioned building.

While a team of firefighters works to save him, the film flips back and forth through Jack’s life in an effort to give us an intimate portrait of the man.

Along the way, we meet Jack as a rookie firefighter, a proud husband to Linda (Jacinda Barrett), a father of two children and a friend to many.

Tension comes in two forms: the pressure of day-to-day life as a firefighter, who is deified here, and how difficult it is for Jack to sustain his increasingly shaky marriage to Linda when he decides to take on more risks at the job.

Though Russell has stripped his movie of subtlety and a wealth of other movies (“The Towering Inferno,” “Top Gun,” “Backdraft,” others) have trained us to expect what’s to come, “Ladder 49” nevertheless manages to be consistently watchable, not dull.

Its strength is in its brisk, credible action and its appealing cast – particularly Phoenix and Barrett, who get the best out of each other onscreen, and John Travolta in the stock role of the concerned fire chief, Capt. Mike Kennedy. All get the job done in a movie that respects the job and the men it depicts.

Grade: B

On video and DVD

THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, directed by Roland Emmerich, written by Emmerich and Jeffrey Nachmanoff, 124 minutes, rated PG-13.

In Roland Emmerich’s disaster flick, “The Day After Tomorrow,” the first city to get cooked by global warming is Tokyo, which gets pummeled by hailstones the size of Godzilla before Emmerich cuts to Los Angeles, which quickly recalls Kansas as scores of tornadoes rip through the city and level it.

Since over-the-top destruction is the point of “The Day After Tomorrow,” the film’s first 20 minutes are a blast, more fun than you expect, with Emmerich having a grand time playing Mother Nature as he huffs and puffs and blows the world down.

Things get dicey for the director when his computer-generated storms reach New York City, where a mounting tsunami is about to overcome Manhattan. As the film’s great tidal wave rolls over the Statue of Liberty and slams into the lower Manhattan skyline, you sense this is it. Either Emmerich is going to have the nerve to alienate audiences by bulldozing those buildings left untouched by the terrorist attacks of 2001, or he’s going to have the good sense to back off.

In a sense he does. No building falls, though millions do drown. The film, which Emmerich co-wrote with Jeffrey Nachmanoff, takes the position that thanks to the atmosphere being littered with greenhouse gases, major climate shifts have caused a series of storms that soon will plunge the Earth into a new ice age. It focuses on a handful of characters (Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Sela Ward) trying to survive the ensuing devastation until the worst is over – the day after tomorrow.

What ensues is trash, but not a cheat. It’s fast-paced and entertaining, particularly in its first hour, a film with good window dressing and an ecological heart that makes up for a so-so script that grinds with stock B-movie characters.

Several scenes are memorable, such as when a deadly blast of subarctic air leeches into the city and freezes it solid. Or, better, when Americans are shown fleeing illegally across the border into Mexico in an effort to beat the looming deep freeze. It’s the film’s most outrageous twist, with our administration promising to forgive all Latin American debt should that country allow us in.

Much of “The Day After Tomorrow” is high-strung hogwash, but scenes like that allow it to deliver more fun than you might expect.

Grade: B

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, 5:30 p.m. Thursdays on WLBZ 2 Bangor and WCSH 6 Portland, and are archived at RottenTomatoes.com. He may be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.