Scott goes to town - and it works

Rating: 7/10 (12 June 2009)

In April or 2004 there were three big revenge films out in theaters: this film, Man on Fire, Kill Bill: Volume 2, and the Punisher. Out of those three, Tony Scott's film, a remake of a small 80s thriller, rested right in the middle. It might have been as ambitious as Tarantino's film, but thankfully was nowhere near as atrocious as that "other" movie. In this Denzel Washington is a bad dude, but one with principles that stretch to the point of no return as he goes to town to find those bastards that took away the girl he was protecting (Dakota Fanning). It's a visual stroke of, well, almost genius perhaps: Scott is into shooting stuff in such a way that we're in a daze a good deal of the time, and he flips the screw on us in such a way that we only know what to expect in some of the characterizations.
But this is Washington digging into a character perhaps just as irredeemable than his character in Training Day- certainly not with too much more range- and yet we end up identifying with this troubled, brutal man because of something Washington puts in Creasy: quiet (or not son quiet) resolve, perhaps? Certainly Scott's approach is daring enough to keep interest, and indeed Man on Fire has become one of those movies that I have seen several times on television. I recognize it's not exceptional or even too great of a revenge picture. Yet I also recognize a craftsmanship to it that doesn't just go for broke but breaks the bank into a bunch of pieces. It's a glorious but decadent excess of style, like with those flagrant subtitles popping up or those fades and dissolves that do backflips on one another.
It's a gritty film shot like on a mescaline trip. It's also got some heavy-duty backup (Giancarlo Giannini, Christopher Walken, Marc Anthony- yes, Marc Anthony), and some really grisly action scenes that reveal as much about the lengths to which Creasy will go as much as the director and writer themselves. It's not something I'd say is at the top of any list, or that I'd immediately rush out to buy. But it's got a magnetic quality for all of its ugly bits and pieces. It's about something, which can be said more than other Tony Scott freak-outs major (Domino) and more whimper style (Taking of Pelham 123).