Man on Fire (2004)

Man on Fire (2004): *** out of ****

Directed by Tony Scott. Screenplay by Brian Helgeland, based on a novel by

A.J. Quinnell. Starring Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, Radha Mitchell,

Giancarlo Giannini, Rachel Ticotin and Marc Anthony.

by Andy Keast

"Man on Fire" is about a killer who is humanized by a young person, loses that

person and then kills again. Denzel Washington plays Creasy, who has been

hired by the wealthy Ramos family (Radha Mitchell and Marc Anthony) to protect

their daughter Lupita (Dakota Fanning). The film takes place in Mexico City,

and has prologue stating the disturbing rate of kidnappings there. And so,

logical audience members should be able to deduce what must happen: Creasy and

Lupita establish a friendship, and no sooner is she kidnapped, sending Creasy

into action. 

The best thing about the film is the grim performance by Washington, and though

he's come under fire for being type cast here, he still creates and knows

Creasy from top to bottom. He's not sociable. He drinks a lot. He has a mean

streak. The movie implies some awful things in his past with the special

forces and wisely doesn't spell out what happened, such as scars and burns on

his hands ("…it's a birth defect" he lies) and a speech given late in the

film by Christopher Walken: "A man can be an artist at anything…Creasy's art

is death." His vengeance takes him everywhere, through the barrios and

mansions of Mexico City, picking off bad guys in sadistic ways. His

methodology is frightening at times, particularly in a scene where he finds an

innovative use for C4. The screenplay by Brian Helgeland is clever in how it

makes Creasy seem dangerous with dialogue rather than with action sequences

every two minutes. It gives Washington such cold-blooded lines as:

"Forgiveness is between them and God. It's my job to arrange the meeting" and

the film's "trailer moment": "I'll do what I do best. Anybody who was

involved, anybody who profited from it, anybody who opens their eyes at me…

I'm gonna kill them."

The supporting cast is hit or miss. The great Italian actor Giancarlo Giannini

makes an appearance as a grizzled Mexican police commissioner, who smokes while

visiting friends in the hospital and does favors for a reporter (the underused

Rachel Ticotin) in exchange for (ahem) other favors. Walken and Mickey Rourke

play Creasy's old colleague and the Ramos' lawyer, respectively, though

honestly their roles are so minor they could've been played by any competent

character actor.

Portions of the film make no sense, but are of course necessary to move the

story forward. I thought it was strange how Giannini and Walken were able to

move a wounded Washington out of a hospital when he's been accused of killing

two policemen, and it was rather convenient that Walken had access to a

gun-show selection of rifles, rocket launchers and plastic explosives. But the

film does, after all, take place in Mexico, where law enforcement is routinely

described as "different." The final revelations behind the kidnapping seem

forced, though not contrived. Thinking back on the main arc of the story, it's

unlikely that a Washington's character would be hired at all -but if that

happened, there's no movie. And is it a coincidence that "Ramos" sounds at all

familiar with "Ramsey"?  

Usually, kinetic photography and editing is used to hide a bad script (a

perfect example is "Requiem for a Dream"), and though Tony Scott's visual style

is nice, the photography by Paul Cameron ("Swordfish") will occasionally get in

the way of what's happening. Other sequences of theirs I liked. A scene at a

dance club is both funny and jarring, and there's a striking reoccurring image

of Washington sinking in a pool of blood. How often does an action film get to

be symbolic? Scott has had some excursions into rawness like this before, with

"The Last Boy Scout" and "True Romance." It is what it is. I liked it for the

lead performance, for Helgeland and Scott going places that "The Punisher"

wasn't willing to go, and for their keeping the movie in the harsh action

spirit of films like "Dirty Harry" and "Lethal Weapon." Both feature an (anti)

hero whose sole purpose is to fight terror with greater terror. If you can

appreciate either of those two films for what they are, you can do the same for

"Man on Fire."

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X-RAMR-ID: 37687
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1276883
X-RT-TitleID: 1131820
X-RT-AuthorID: 9883
X-RT-RatingText: 3/4