Man on Fire

Tony Scott ruins another potentially good film with his over-direction in 2004’s Man on Fire. Tony Scott, the brother of Ridley Scott (American Gangster, Gladiator), has an impressive filmography in his own right with films like True Romance and Top Gun. Unfortunately, much of Tony Scott’s career has been marred by his obsession with music-video style directing techniques, quick cuts, edits, montages, and other parlour tricks. Some directors can do this style with efficiency, while others cannot. Tony Scott falls into the latter category.

Man on Fire has a solid story going for it as a remake of a 1987 film of the same name. It was also based on a series of books by A.J. Quinnell about a former Marine turned mercenary. Scott’s movie sets up a Mexico City in which children go missing frequently and criminal gangs run kidnapping rings to extort money out of wealthy families. It’s treated like a daily occurrence and Mexico is given classic hellhole treatment as these murky gang members abduct the children of the affluent.

Enter Mexican businessman Samuel Ramos (Marc Anthony, yes that Marc Anthony). Ramos, like other wealthy people, hires a bodyguard to help watch over his precocious blonde daughter (Dakota Fanning, of course). On the advice of his lawyer (Mickey Rourke), Ramos takes out something called ransom insurance. The head of a security firm, Paul Rayburn (Christopher Walken), suggests that Ramos hires John Creasy (Denzel Washington) and the fun begins. Creasy and the little girl develop a slow attachment to one another and she “shows him how to live again” after untold events have haunted Creasy for years and turned him into the prototypical brooding alcoholic anti-hero.

Just as things start looking good and just as Creasy has traded the Jack Daniels for the Bible, the little girl is abducted by thugs and Creasy’s world is turned upside down. A gang member works with Ramos to arrange a drop, but something goes wrong and the girl is thought dead. Creasy turns to revenge, which coincides perfectly with his newfound Bible reading, and tears apart Mexico City one limb at a time as he unearths the kidnapping gang to put them under ground for good.

Washington and Fanning are strong in the movie and their relationship is worth watching, but it unravels too quickly and comes together too quickly to be all that believable. While the actors seem to be doing what they can, a weak script and Scott’s frenetic directing seem destined to steal the spotlight. Scott directs his actors like he has ADHD, spinning and splicing around with all sorts of music video tricks. He uses murky idiotic subtitles that seem cool at first, but fail to work when they appear as white text on a white background. The effects used by Scott to film an otherwise interesting story are overbearing and, at times, obnoxious.

Scott also fails to bring a lot of conclusiveness to his film, despite every best effort to do so. There are three or four false finishes to the film, making Return of the King look concise. Man on Fire desperately searches for a “happy ending” despite giving us well over two hours of doom and gloom. Referring to Mexico City, after denigrating it shamelessly for hours, as a “very special place” seems to be the icing on the cake for this masturbatory piece of work.

Man on Fire is essentially a revenge picture that was released around the same time as two other revenge pictures, Kill Bill Vol. 2 and The Punisher. Man on Fire obviously lacks the punch and fun of Kill Bill Vol. 2 and it’s actually not much better than The Punisher, which at least knew it was a comic book adaptation. Man on Fire blows through the revenge issues with little class or thought, instead turning Washington’s Creasy into a vengeful monster in mere minutes. We are given little insight into where this comes from, too, which makes the rage all the more unsettling. His merciless anti-hero is well-acted, but not always well-suited. Washington brings the heat, but there’s little to back him up once Fanning is taken off-screen.

Revenge fantasies are big business in a world filled with injustice. Audiences may well cheer at Washington’s crusade here, but they’ll likely have to check logic at the door. When on the verge of taking down a whole child abduction operation, Washington makes a choice that sacrifices the life of one white blonde girl for the lives of thousands of other children waiting to be abducted. The overtones are clear and as obnoxious as Scott’s ridiculous “tribute” to Mexico City during the end credits. Scott simply lets everything go too far here and fails to produce a solid narrative, making Man on Fire a heavily disappointing film despite the best efforts of its stars.

3/10