Is there anyone else who can't believe how EVERYONE seems OK with "an eye for an eye" ???

Rating: 5/10 (8 January 2005)

I am from Germany and live in Switzerland, and have seen around me how ugly primitive anti-Americanism can get. So I want to state this is not my orientation at all.
Now, I have read through the first two pages of user comments on this movie, and gave up finding even one single review questioning this movie's incredible message.
Take one of the most politically correct actors active in Hollywood (if not the King of them all...?), Mr. Denzel Washington. I admit I love him as much as anyone else, and I think he gives a good performance here, so that's not what bothers me. Now, put him with the most gorgeous, irresistible little girl on earth (I share the enthusiasm of many for Dakota Fanning, it would be hard not to...). They become friends, she helps him feeling needed as a person again and he becomes a father/big brother to her - to my humble opinion, if quite classical and nothing revolutionary, the scenes where they form that bond are by far the best thing in this movie! - and she DIES, or he thinks so.
Now, you show this wounded man (and very widely beloved actor) getting in to a revenge fury in reaction to being deprived of the one living being who was making him feel alive again, and can we hold back our own sympathy for his state of mind when faced with the murder of a (perfectly lovable, very young) child? STILL, what animates Creasy's CRUSADE has to be called by its name: a personal revenge action that crosses every moral and legal border one can think of.
I don't remember ANY Hollywood movie telling me an "eye for an eye" is OKAY... until MAN ON FIRE. Creasy, BY ALL MEANS shown as the GOOD GUY in this movie, moves from personal distress to using the skills learned and perfected during his missions for U.S. governmental secret services - i.e. TORTURE, EXTREME INTERROGATION TECHNIQUE, and finally ARBITRARY EXECUTION - to make the BAD GUYS suffer before murdering them. All because he's mad at them and, to a lesser extent, because the not quite disgraceful nor unsexy mother tells him too.
I'm shivering as I recount all this being in a mainstream movie... and NOBODY seems to flinch !!!???!!!
It's a small consolation that, at least, the incredibly irritating MTV-like flashes and super-short shots bombarding you from time to time have been spotted by some: =shawn_eason= : "to top this all off Tony's use of Mtv-style filming gave me the biggest headache, far worse than the shakiness of the camera in Blair Witch...sigh why did he need the unnecessary flash zip pow here then there, then back again... my head is spinning." ...unfortunately, just before that, he considers "It would of been an OK movie say (and I hate to say it) the girl wasn't alive because then it would of justify his rampage, however, she was alive" (so, if the girl had actually been murdered, the executions would have been okay...) and he finishes with "I still think it was OK though." :(
As well, my enthusiasm for Dakota Fanning reflects in =jana1251= 's comment (at least she doesn't explicitly approve the story...).
The comment title "does considered, planned out bloody revenge make you go "oooo"?" by =Janessa= was very promising, but not at all, it's "well worth the rental"...
About half of the comments are by women, so the Denzel-magic seems to work equally on both sexes to erase any sense of criticism as long as he is the one in charge...
I AM SORRY for this being a very long comment that does nothing but complaining. But I am genuinely SHOCKED that a movie that is essentially blessing a bloody crusade WITHOUT EVER HINTING THAT THE HERO COULD BE WRONG (that would have made the movie into something more interesting as well as less ambiguous human-wise!) doesn't seem to raise so much as an eyebrow. I don't feel like discussing this movie (which has about as much qualities as it has flaws). Since I'm condemning it from the start, I couldn't care less about the ending being happy or not...
I would recommend to watch it as an incredibly irresponsible statement by the movie industry to a large audience: "If deeply harmed/wronged/hurt, the GOOD guys are allowed to exercise vendetta in the form of torture and assassination."
Think about it. Please.