Good Saturday afternoon fair even if overlong

Rating: 6/10 (25 April 2004)

Looking back on Tony Scott's career you see a plethora of movies that seemed destined for Saturday afternoon television. Days of Thunder, The Last Boy Scout, The Fan.all were movies that appealed to the testosterone full male audience while managing to do so-so at the box office. Over the past twenty years, Scott has had the privilege of working with some of Hollywood's elite including Gene Hackman (twice), Tom Cruise (twice), Brad Pitt (twice) and now, with his new film Man on Fire, Denzel Washington has appeared in front of the camera two times for Ridley's younger brother.

With Man on Fire, Denzel goes back to where he is probably most comfortable in the role of a justice seeking authority figure. This marks the 10th time that Denzel has played the role of a cop or soldier out for revenge or retribution dating back to 1989's The Mighty Quinn. This in no way suggests that Denzel has not expanded his acting range since he bolted from St. Elsewhere on television in 1982. His turns in Glory, Malcolm X and The Hurricane shows just how versatile the actor can be and his five Academy Award nominations and two wins are testament to his tinsel town legacy.

But I beg to ask why when the script of Man on Fire came across his nightstand, did he jump back into a protector's role that he has done time and time again. Maybe Tony Scott runs a fun shoot. Maybe Denzel wanted to get a chance to star alongside Christopher Walken or maybe DW just wanted to spend a few months in Mexico. No matter the reason, Man on Fire is exactly what you would expect from the same two people who brought us Crimson Tide. And in short, that's too bad.
Man on Fire is set in Mexico and surrounds the kidnapping of a wealthy family's daughter. Denzel known only as Creasy, is the alcoholic bodyguard who is entrusted with her safety and loses her in a dramatic street gunfight that leaves him with multiple bullet holes. After a remarkable recovery, Creasy is up and back on the assignment gunning down, blowing up and shooting just about everyone in Mexico that ever looked funny at his young victim.
As Creasy gets deeper and deeper into the individual cells responsible for the kidnapping, the local police play piggy-back and watch silently as Creasy unravels department corruption, a father's desperate scheme to get out of debt and finally the unveiling of the ringleader of the rash of kidnappings in the country known only to authorities as The Voice'.

At a whopping 146 minutes, Man on Fire is about 45 minutes too long for a film of this genre. It takes nearly an hour before the kidnapping takes place and I was left with a feeling that Tony Scott was unsure of himself and didn't know how to relate to the audience an emotional attachment between Denzel and the young Dakota Fanning. As a result of this unassurance, we have to spend time with the two in overdrawn scenes including swimming lessons, homework assignments and multiple car rides where the two would talk and argue about things non-relevant to the overall plot. As trailers revealed a kidnapping plot, as a paying customer, I became antsy an hour into the film and just wanted things to finally play out their course.
Also a nuisance was the various styles that Scott tries to incorporate into the film. He uses various film stock, sub titles that appear anywhere except the bottom of the screen and multiple editing cuts and close-ups that frankly just don't work when combined together over the duration of the running time. Maybe we should all sign a petition and force Scott to see Steven Soderbergh's Traffic so that he could take notes on how to effectively use these different methods to bring a feel to the film without making us as nauseous as the tea cup ride at an amusement park.

And really, it's too bad that this project fails on these levels. Denzel, Walken and Fanning all give exceptional performances, and I won't go as far as to say they were wasted, but the potential to make something extraordinary was hidden deep in the script and I wonder aloud what a directorial change might have done to recognize this fact.

The violence too is unique in its own right. A scene involving fingers and a car lighter brought back memories of the torture scene in Reservoir Dogs. Another scene involving an explosive butt plug is also something I had not seen before and considering the rash amount of action films that get released every year, that is saying a lot.
So I guess I give Man on Fire its chops for attempting to be something different albeit its shortcomings are clearly evident. This is one of those movies that sits on the fence of being a recommendation or a pan, but then I thought that when I see the commercials for `Coming soon to TBS this Saturday afternoon', I have to admit that I will probably be tuning in.

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