An entertaining-fascist-violent action movie...

Rating: 7/10 (6 October 2005)

The novel this movie is based on had a first adaptation in 1987, but I haven't' watched that film , so I cannot compare. As for this new adaptation, it is a story about kidnappings, ransoms, revenge, and corruption in the city of Mexico with Denzel Washington playing the main role: an alcoholic ex-marine disenchanted from life that ends up working as a bodyguard for a rich men's little daughter (Dakota Fanning -this kid is just one of the most impressive young actors ever-) . Putting aside the ideology of the film (pretty fascist and violent, just like "Dirty Harry", "Lethal Weapon", and stuff like that), what we have here is a rather commercial picture directed by the man who made "classics" such as "Top Gun" or "Days Of Thunder", nice filmed action, with bad constructed characters (what the hell is going' on with Washintong's character? Why has he ended up like that? Maybe I missed something...). As usual in this kind of artifacts the Americans are the good guys, and the mexicans-russians-whatever are pretty pretty bad guys so unscrupulous...
OK let's give it a 6.5/10