Good, solid, enjoyable film ***SPOILERS***

Rating: 7/10 (24 August 2004)

Went and saw this at the theatre last night.
My wife and I made up two of the total of three people in the theatre so it was like a private screening.
While I am probably going to criticise this film more than I praise it, my overall impression of the film was good and I give it 7/10.
I won't go into the plot as it must be common knowledge.
The directing on this film was solid and I have few complaints about that.

Hey! It's a Tony Scott film. Like his other works such as Top Gun, Days of Thunder, True Romance, Crimson Tide, etc, what were the people expecting who are knocking this film so badly.
The film was a bit overlong at nearly two and a half hours. I do think it may have tried a bit to hard to be a very good film and thus Scott left in some bits that should have been cut. It was probably 20 minutes too long.
The film falls somewhere between a drama, thriller and action film without being outstanding in any of those genre.
The story was good and Scott spent time trying to develop the lead characters so the audience would form a bond with them before getting down to the business end.
Without wanting to sound too wishy washy, this was both a strength and weakness of "Man on Fire" depending on what you are looking for in a film.
The acting was ok. Denzel was Denzel, playing a character that could have been transplanted from many of his other films.
The need for him to dispatch or interrogate each villain in a different manner irked me a bit. The method by which Denzel dispatched the guy tied down over the hood of the car was ridiculous and in my opinion damaged the credibility of the film.
Denzel wasn't playing the sort of character to beat about the bush or over-complicate proceedings, so I don't know what was with that rubbish.
The tragic ending to the film was appropriate, yet should have been done differently. It bore striking similarities to Scott's sibling Ridley's "Gladiator". Very unoriginal, even the score seemed plagurised.
I did think the film tapped into our emotions nicely, invoking emotional highs and lows, a couple of genuinely supenseful moments and also great anger and hatred after everything turned to custard.
Who didn't want Denzel to track down the bad guys and exterminate them all?

This hard edge was what made the movie superior to recent kidnap films such as "Ransom" or "Proof of Life" which both had happy endings. "Man on Fire" lost this edge at the end when it developed into a kind of happy ending.

It stretched credibility that such evil guys didn't carry though with their threat, yet never made contact again with another ransom demand.
A "Get Carter" (1971 version) kind of ending would have been a more fitting kind of finish to this movie.
Overall a good film, though it could have been better.