A revolution in subtitle technology!

Rating: 4/10 (28 April 2004)

In a time when the cineplexes are heavily populated with revenge tales, Man On Fire (which could just as easily have been titled Kill Bills or The Other Punisher or Walking Tall and Furious) is not exactly a breath of fresh air. Denzel Washington takes on the role of a family-less drifter of a man trying to outrun a past that is never explained very clearly, beyond the fact that he is trying to drown it in a bottle of Jack Daniel's, but even then only long enough to allow the audience to develop a healthy bit of doubt about his character. Maybe it would create more tension later if we weren't really sure we could trust him or not.
Unfortunately, Denzel Washington, a massively talented actor, has become increasingly typecast as the desperate black guy determined to break any rules necessary to get what he wants, be it a heart for his son, revenge for the alleged killing of a girl that he was just hired to watch, etc. I was disappointed by Training Day because it was more violent than it had any reason to be, and John Q looked like just another desperate father trying to save his son tale and turned out to be exactly that with no twists or anything added to make itself necessary. Structurally, Man On Fire is designed a bit like Out of Time (one of Denzel's better recent movies), with much of the first portion of the film dedicated to presenting the flaws in Creasy's (Washington) character. He has a dark past, he has no solid footing anywhere so he kind of drifts around in search of meaningful (or, failing that, meaningless) employment, and as he explains to a cautious mother as she interviews him for the job of being her daughter's bodyguard, he drinks.

Speaking of the daughter, Dakota Fanning is an impossibly adorable child actor, and it seemed like a shame to me that Tony Scott didn't think that was enough to endear her to the audience. Instead of making her a charming ten-year-old daughter (actually, I think her character in the movie was even younger than that) who could have been further endearing because of what would be an expected level of fright at her surroundings (being a little American girl living in the heart of Mexico City) they go so far over the top that she ultimately becomes the kind of child that could only exist in an action movie where she gets kidnapped. Within a minute of introducing her onscreen, we have already learned that she plays the piano, speaks two languages (granted, this is to be expected since she's American and lives semi-permanently in Mexico City), and says things like `Yes, mother,' and `Right this way, Mr. Creasy.' What kid talks like that?

On the other hand, it later makes more sense that she is portrayed as Super Daughter, because `Mr. Creasy' later goes on to exact Super Revenge for her kidnapping and apparent murder. This, unfortunately, is where the movie really begins to slip. Man On Fire may have a lengthy running time of almost two and a half hours because it took so much time at the beginning to introduce us to Creasy and, more importantly, to show the relationship between him and Pita (Fanning) develop from uncomfortable to inseparable. It soon becomes clear that the reason for this is to create a strong enough bond to justify Creasy going on to brutally torture the men involved in her kidnapping. Make no mistake, the audience suffers through these scenes as well, so you better make sure you're also pretty ticked off about the kidnapping.
(spoilers) Creasy delivers the cold platter of revenge to several of the bad guys in such ways as cutting a guy's fingers off while his hands are duct taped to the steering wheel and then cauterizing the stubs with the cigarette lighter, and even better, informing a man tied to the hood of a car that while he was passed out (presumably from being beaten), Creasy took the liberty of inserting a highly explosive suppository which will detonate after his little interview. Pretty creative stuff, and exactly what our base human instincts like to see happen to someone who would kidnap and kill a little girl, but once the vicious revenge has been delivered, she turns up alive! OOPS!
Admittedly, they're still bad guys. They still kidnapped the girl and demanded money, but as it turns out, it was the father who planned the thing in the first place, and he gets the most merciful killing, if you would qualify his death as a killing, per se. Why is the man who is guiltier than anyone, and the worst person in the world to have done what he did, given the most mercy? The other guys tried desperately to convince Creasy while he tortured and killed them that they were only following orders, they were only doing a job and they were impartial, and it turned out that they were telling the truth. Criminals, yes, but did they really deserve explosive suppositories? In one scene, the father tearfully tells his wife that he thought their daughter would be treated well, that she would be watching cartoons and eating ice cream, and given her physical state when she turned back up at the end of the movie, that probably is how she was treated.

The question is not whether Creasy can be expected to have known this. He was convinced that she was dead, and really had no reason to believe that she was alive. The problem is that this is how the movie was written. The plot did not happen accidentally, it was deliberately created this way. We are given an abduction set-up, briefly informed of the family's large-scale financial difficulties (the rather ham-handed foreshadowing of who was behind the whole thing), and then Creasy goes on his rampage. The movie exists so that this man can seek brutal revenge against the killers of a young girl, then she turns up alive and not a word is spoken about the delivery of harsher deaths than were deserved. Maybe this was why Creasy came to the end that he did. He was beyond redemption and was driven off in the custody of the bad guys, presumably to be tortured. Luckily for him, he drifts peacefully off into a calmer death than he could otherwise have expected, his medallion of the Patron Saint of Lost Causes in his hand.
The ending is really the only part that is morally justifiable. Creasy can't live happily ever after because of what he has done, but he can't really be blamed exactly because of what he thought that he was seeking vengeance for. The direction is innovative but unnerving, with Tony Scott's signature lightning fast editing (better used in intense action scenes than throughout an entire film, as you can see here) zooms across the screen, with the exposure also inexplicably flying up and down like a roller coaster, blinding you one second and then darkening so fast that it's not always even the next second. Sometimes it's blindingly bright one second and then dark later in that same second. I imagine the point is to throw the audience off a little, make them feel just a little uncomfortable, but didn't the snapping off of the fingers and the sizzling cauterizing of the stumps already do that quite enough? Evidently not, so while you're busy chasing the most energetic subtitles in film history across the screen, try to remember that yes, revenge is a dish best served cold, but it's at least as important to keep in mind that it is a dish best served to people who really deserves such large helpings.