Lost Under Avalanche of Bad Production

Rating: 6/10 (25 April 2004)

Man on Fire is a good movie who's story is lost among bad lines, horrible camera work and some of the worst subtitling I have ever seen. Bad subtitling? Yeah you're laughing now. wait till you see the movie.

First off the script leaves something to be desired. Despite being predictable, during a handful of key lines you can almost feel the actors asking themselves, `Seriously, would this person really be talking like this?' The good part is that the long drawn out dialog takes away from the horrible camera work.
The cinematography for this movie was simple. Buy a grainy film (probably EXR), zoom in really close and shake the camera like your sitting on a vibrating bed. Don't get me wrong the raw, gritty look can be cool if you do it right (Example: Amores Perros, 25th Hour, 21 Grams) but when you over do it, you start to have problems. And Man on Fire is way over done.

To make matters worse, for some reason the maniacal editor (or whoever) found it necessary to go do hallucinogens while they were subtitling. Granted the movie takes place in Mexico City, so naturally there is subtitling for the Spanish. Then the subtitling gets a little bit fancier. words don't appear until they're said. Alright no harm done. Then for some reason they decided to start subtitling the English. Yes an English movie subtitled in English. I can only imagine a deaf person having to watch double the subtitles because the editor thought it would be artsy if half-way through the movie he started subtitling in his own language. Just when you think it can't get any worse, it does. the subtitles start changing font, sizes and start reacting to what the people on screen are saying. It hits a breaking point when Denzel's character, Creasy, starts shouting and the subtitles take up the whole screen. I go to movies to watch a movie not to read what I can already hear.
Other than that Dakota Fanning and Denzel Washington were awesome. Marc Anthony out acts Mickey Rourke and Christopher Walkin plays himself... again.
Man on Fire 6/10