Far From Being A Hot Thriller

Rating: 4/10 (27 March 2014)

You want a revenge thriller that isn't run of the mill ? Difficult task considering it's been done . In fact this entire film is a remake of another film from the 1980s when action thrillers were very fashionable . They were also fairly low brow with a host of big name stars or relatively well known actors , or relatively well known wannabe non actor stars ( Hello Chuck Norris ) getting a bit mean and moody and dispatching bad guys who were invariably part of a multi ethnic street gang or nasty communists in a variety of cruel and explicit ways . It's been done before and you'd better be bringing something new to the table . Considering MAN ON FIRE was written by Brian Helgeland the signs might be promising . Helgeland might be rather hit and miss but anyone who wrote brought LA CONFIDENTIAL to screen after everyone considered it to be unfilmable does deserve some respect . Dare I say that if it doesn't work out Helgeland might remain blameless ?
I'm afraid that Helgeland has to take some blame for this movie failing . I read the synopsis and apparently it's about a bodyguard on the revenge trail after some seriously bad gringos because they've overstepped the mark by kidnapping a little girl . Obviously it wasn't a local Latina girl because that'd be business as usual so the audience are asked to empathise with the victim because it's a blond American child - and she's been kidnapped by Mexicans .Probably conscious that this film might inadvertently become a recruiting film for the Aryan Brotherhood the producers hit upon the bright idea of making the American bodyguard black . This is one of two major problems the film has
1 ) It stars Denzil Washington
2 ) It's directed by Tony Scott
The major inciting incident of the actual kidnap doesn't take place until an hour in to the running time so thanks for nothing Brian and before we get there we have a character piece . See the problem ? We have a character piece starring Denzil Washington and directed by Tony Scott . Washington has always left me with indifference . He's not bad but by the same yardstick he's not someone who ever gives an outstanding performance in my opinion and he's asked to give a multi-layered performance as nice guy turned cold hearted assassin . A slight fail . What is an epic fail is someone thinking Tony Scott is a natural choice for a character driven story . He certainly doesn't give the impression he's suited for the talkative slow burning early scenes . When the action does finally take off Scott does what he normally does and ramps , over edits and uses crash zoom lens giving the impression you're watching a monster hybrid between a video game and an advert for rum . I suppose it could have been worse and we could have got Ben Affleck starring in a film directed by Michael Bay but that's not much in the way of praise as to what we did get