A revenge tragedy for modern time - breathtaking

Rating: 9/10 (21 February 2006)

Wow! Wow, wow, wow, WOW! When a good director, honing his skills in a particular genre over many years, suddenly brings it all together in one film the result is almost always breathtaking. Tony Scott's "Man on Fire" is such a film and is guaranteed to stand out as Scott's ultimate masterpiece for many years to come. "True Romance", Scott's super cool breakthrough crime thriller which used a typically brilliant screenplay by Tarantino was fun, funny and dripping with coolness, but "Man of Fire" shows that Scott can do heavy drama as well as cool, slick action. Denzel Washington digs deep in this film to some of his darkest demons and pulls out a performance that is inspirational in its complexity and depth. The key to the film's success is in the relationship between Denzel's character, a washed up black-ops mercenary now working as a bodyguard, and his ward, the wonderfully mature yet very vulnerable Dakota Fanning. Once you believe the relationship between the two characters and the degree to which the young girl helps the old bodyguard to find new meaning in his life, the rest of the tragic film just falls into place, and boy, do you believe it! The first half of the film is one of the best character development sequences I have ever seen on screen - perfectly written and inspirationally acted. Scott uses his trademark style to bring the two characters together while continually suggesting in the background the menacing danger of Mexico City's crime-ridden streets and the inevitable tragic turn of events looming over the characters' blossoming friendship. A classic revenge tragedy, "Man on Fire" is not easy to watch. The second half of the film, to some no doubt gratuitously violent and at times even self-indulgently so, only works because of the first half of the film and because your sense of sympathy for Denzel's tortured vigilante is overwhelming. If the ancient definition of tragedy is that it raises in the viewer emotions of pity and fear then "Man on Fire" is Scott's hardboiled answer to Shakespeare's Hamlet. I doubt Scott will ever repeat this level of intensity, where his trademark erratic visual style is for once justified and where all the elements come together to deliver what is to my mind the most powerful cinematic experience of the last year, if not of the last decade.