Man On Fire ««½
R, 146m. 2004
Cast & Credits: Denzel Washington (Creasy), Dakota Fanning (Pita), Marc Anthony (Samuel), Radha Mitchell (Lisa), Christopher Walken (Rayburn), Giancarlo Giannini (Manzano), Rachel Ticotin (Mariana), Mickey Rourke (Jordan). Screenplay by Brian Helgeland based on the novel by A.J. Quinnell. Directed by Tony Scott.
Man On Fire suffers from the same problem as The Punisher (2004) in that midway through the film, what was an innocently joyous moment one minute immediately becomes a dark bloody tale of revenge the next.
The defining moment in The Punisher that caused the anti-hero to go off the deep end was after hit men systematically wiped out his entire family at a reunion. The most unsettling moment in Man On Fire comes when another anti-hero, a former Marine named Creasy swears vengeance after he is wounded attempting and failing to foil a kidnapping plot involving a young girl.
Denzel Washington plays Creasy, a former marine and anti-terrorism expert and now alcoholic who’s hired to protect a 10-year-old girl named Pita (Dakota Fanning), the daughter of a prominent family in Latin America. The young girl, who’s had a number of bodyguards before him, tries to make small talk with Creasy even telling him the percentage of kidnappings that happen in her country. Creasy coldly responds back saying she shouldn’t know about such things at her age. For much of the film’s first hour, Creasy eventually takes a liking to Pita helping her with homework and even taking on the job of being her swimming coach when the girl’s parents are away.
Nice sometimes offbeat moments like these make what’s to come all the more disturbing from which Man On Fire never recovers. For the next 90 minutes, at a running time of close to two-and-a-half hours, Creasy decides to take the law into his own hands vowing revenge on the ones behind Pita’s kidnapping. Whereas Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) opened with the quote from an “old Klingon Proverb” saying, “Revenge is a dish best served cold,” Washington’s lead character in Man On Fire actually says the line as he sends one of the conspirators to his doom.
He becomes a well-dressed Angel of Death whose lethal instruments include a shotgun, a shoulder armored missile launcher and a lot of bomb making materials whose job is to not forgive.
“Forgiveness is between them and God,” Creasy says. “It’s my job to arrange the meeting.”
The film is all a case of slow torture as Creasy slices off the fingers of one person every time he doesn’t get a straight answer and ties another guy to the hood of a car stripped down to his underwear with a bomb stuck up his rear end. At one point, he even has a casual conversation with one of the kidnappers when he finds out the guy happens to be from his own home state of New Jersey before he pulls the trigger. As Rayburn (Christopher Walken) warns to a police inspector midway through the film, “Creasy’s art is death. He is about to paint his masterpiece.”
The film was directed with visual style by Tony Scott who just like he demonstrated in Enemy of the State (1998) and Spy Game (2001) again shows his love for inundating his audiences with grainy, fast-paced sequences and flashbacks. They happen so quickly throughout the film that I kind of wished my mind had a rewind switch so I can see what it was I just watched. As a result, I am still not exactly certain what made Creasy become an alcoholic to begin with.
Washington’s character is the kind of complex, sympathetic person the antihero in The Punisher should have been who has taken up reading the Bible in between drinking bottles of Jack Daniels and whose mind it seems is on his past sins. When Rayburn answers no to Creasy’s question on whether God will forgive him for what he’s done, Creasy adds, “Me neither.”
I loved Dakota Fanning’s performance as the 10-year-old damsel-in-distress who develops a caring friendship with Creasy. She lovingly describes him as a “big sad bear” who later names her personal teddy bear, “Creasy bear.” She was the best thing to come out of watching The Cat In the Hat (2003) playing an uptight 8-year-old who doesn’t know how to have fun. She is proving herself to be such a natural talent that I can only wonder what kinds of roles she’ll land when she gets older.
Man On Fire is now the third film released this month where the lead character goes on a much needed killing spree after they’re left for dead. As far as where this movie ranks, the film isn’t as comically violent nor as clever as the Kill Bill movies. On the other hand, it is much better than The Punisher which was a joyless, tedious exercise in blood-thirsty masochism.
I won’t deny the villains are total sleaze balls in Man On Fire who truly deserved what’s coming to them. The problem is I didn’t get any joy out of seeing them meet their demises, nor did I find myself rooting for Washington’s character.
This all boils down to the one and only good point The Punisher stressed when it came to revenge. There is nothing positive to be gained by divvying out personal justice. All you get in the end is emptiness which is exactly what I got watching Man On Fire.
©4/28/04
R, 146m. 2004
Cast & Credits: Denzel Washington (Creasy), Dakota Fanning (Pita), Marc Anthony (Samuel), Radha Mitchell (Lisa), Christopher Walken (Rayburn), Giancarlo Giannini (Manzano), Rachel Ticotin (Mariana), Mickey Rourke (Jordan). Screenplay by Brian Helgeland based on the novel by A.J. Quinnell. Directed by Tony Scott.
The defining moment in The Punisher that caused the anti-hero to go off the deep end was after hit men systematically wiped out his entire family at a reunion. The most unsettling moment in Man On Fire comes when another anti-hero, a former Marine named Creasy swears vengeance after he is wounded attempting and failing to foil a kidnapping plot involving a young girl.
Denzel Washington plays Creasy, a former marine and anti-terrorism expert and now alcoholic who’s hired to protect a 10-year-old girl named Pita (Dakota Fanning), the daughter of a prominent family in Latin America. The young girl, who’s had a number of bodyguards before him, tries to make small talk with Creasy even telling him the percentage of kidnappings that happen in her country. Creasy coldly responds back saying she shouldn’t know about such things at her age. For much of the film’s first hour, Creasy eventually takes a liking to Pita helping her with homework and even taking on the job of being her swimming coach when the girl’s parents are away.
Nice sometimes offbeat moments like these make what’s to come all the more disturbing from which Man On Fire never recovers. For the next 90 minutes, at a running time of close to two-and-a-half hours, Creasy decides to take the law into his own hands vowing revenge on the ones behind Pita’s kidnapping. Whereas Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) opened with the quote from an “old Klingon Proverb” saying, “Revenge is a dish best served cold,” Washington’s lead character in Man On Fire actually says the line as he sends one of the conspirators to his doom.
He becomes a well-dressed Angel of Death whose lethal instruments include a shotgun, a shoulder armored missile launcher and a lot of bomb making materials whose job is to not forgive.
“Forgiveness is between them and God,” Creasy says. “It’s my job to arrange the meeting.”
The film is all a case of slow torture as Creasy slices off the fingers of one person every time he doesn’t get a straight answer and ties another guy to the hood of a car stripped down to his underwear with a bomb stuck up his rear end. At one point, he even has a casual conversation with one of the kidnappers when he finds out the guy happens to be from his own home state of New Jersey before he pulls the trigger. As Rayburn (Christopher Walken) warns to a police inspector midway through the film, “Creasy’s art is death. He is about to paint his masterpiece.”
The film was directed with visual style by Tony Scott who just like he demonstrated in Enemy of the State (1998) and Spy Game (2001) again shows his love for inundating his audiences with grainy, fast-paced sequences and flashbacks. They happen so quickly throughout the film that I kind of wished my mind had a rewind switch so I can see what it was I just watched. As a result, I am still not exactly certain what made Creasy become an alcoholic to begin with.
Washington’s character is the kind of complex, sympathetic person the antihero in The Punisher should have been who has taken up reading the Bible in between drinking bottles of Jack Daniels and whose mind it seems is on his past sins. When Rayburn answers no to Creasy’s question on whether God will forgive him for what he’s done, Creasy adds, “Me neither.”
I loved Dakota Fanning’s performance as the 10-year-old damsel-in-distress who develops a caring friendship with Creasy. She lovingly describes him as a “big sad bear” who later names her personal teddy bear, “Creasy bear.” She was the best thing to come out of watching The Cat In the Hat (2003) playing an uptight 8-year-old who doesn’t know how to have fun. She is proving herself to be such a natural talent that I can only wonder what kinds of roles she’ll land when she gets older.
Man On Fire is now the third film released this month where the lead character goes on a much needed killing spree after they’re left for dead. As far as where this movie ranks, the film isn’t as comically violent nor as clever as the Kill Bill movies. On the other hand, it is much better than The Punisher which was a joyless, tedious exercise in blood-thirsty masochism.
I won’t deny the villains are total sleaze balls in Man On Fire who truly deserved what’s coming to them. The problem is I didn’t get any joy out of seeing them meet their demises, nor did I find myself rooting for Washington’s character.
This all boils down to the one and only good point The Punisher stressed when it came to revenge. There is nothing positive to be gained by divvying out personal justice. All you get in the end is emptiness which is exactly what I got watching Man On Fire.
©4/28/04
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