A special, intriguing, discomfiting near-master work

Rating: 10/10 (1 September 2005)

'Man on Fire' is a film in two parts. . . .no, that is wrong, it is a film in two halves – one as bright as a little girl named 'Pita' and the pleasure she gives us -- the other as dark as the terrible density of a Black Hole that crushes even light itself.
Unlike so many films which are in two pieces -- for that is their flaw, they don't make a complete, smooth work – the two opposing halves of 'Man on Fire' fit as tightly as the Yin and the Yang, diametric opposites seamlessly welded into a whole.
We are first seduced into a rather sweet un-cloying film, as Denzel Washington's 'John Creasy', resists ... then yields to an increasingly swift glide from a shelled and cynical and absolutely alone near-alcoholic into the persistent affection of the 10-year-old Mexican-American girl he is hired to protect. Hired on the cheap, "because I drink."
'Pita', wonderfully crafted by the very young Dakota Fanning, has a wisdom and a charm that seem to sometimes arise in the only child who grows up in a difficult but not cruel situation, and has the time and space to develop a strong character, a 'center'. Pita is friendly, and so is disappointed when rebuffed by Creasy, but not hurt. After a step back for a long look at him, this musing little girl decides Creasy is worth the siege.
She draws him into a game of emotional chess, which he will not admit he is even playing until he is checkmated. In turn he helps her surmount an athletic obstacle, and the reward to him – and to us – is her elation.
Creasy and Pita have become close. 'Close' is something Creasy has not felt in a very long time. A friend says much later in the film, "She showed him it was all right to live again".
This sweetness -- not of saccharine, but of a complex natural honey -- becomes more and more disquieting. For we know he is a bodyguard hired to protect this little girl -- in a Mexico City of 24 child kidnappings in six days. So, we also know the attempt on 'Pita' will come. HAS to come. And because of the dark staccato march of the film, we know that the attempt will be very hard, probably brutal.
And after the kidnap comes – chaotic, violent, messy – a wounded Creasy mutates swiftly into an indomitable arsenal of vengeance from which even Dumas, author of 'The Count of Monte Cristo', would recoil. There are many kinds of anger – wild rage . . . molten fury . . . a cold and measured wrath. It is the last that is the most dangerous, because it is an anger that thinks and calculates and cannot be distracted. It is John Creasy's.
His friend 'Rayburn', played wonderfully by Christopher Walken, describing Creasy's anger as an art, says – "He's about to paint his masterpiece." Creasy formulates a solo raid on the complicated forces of gang greed grafted to official corruption that engineered the kidnapping, with a 'little help from his friends' – a former fellow counter-intelligence operative, a veteran Mexico City newswoman with a mission to expose rotten special police officers, and an honest police official of courage and a profile too public for the corrupt to dare touch.
There has never been a Reaper so Grim as John Creasy. His retribution is absolute, merciless, and thorough, with little 'touches' that an artist of any kind tends to apply to a 'masterpiece'.
It is often a difficult film to watch, because it is so raw, so real, so visceral and yet so intelligent. Our emotions and our intellects – that is to say, our knowing minds – are drawn toward and into its center, which swallows us like a slow, inexorable python.
It's a smart film, an intelligent film, and inside are some of the tightest turns and twists outside of the human intestine, which is where we are taken -- into the bowel of crime and corruption. There are too many surprises to follow, except by rushing to catch up, but none are gratuitous, none are forced. And all are intriguing.
Tony Scott's direction of Brian Helgeland's script increases our discomfort with a pace often pierced by rapid, unclear shards of sequence that unsettle us, and a murky frame here and there – 'What the hell was in that pool?', ''Who yelled that?', and just plain 'Hunh?' As with all good films that plot well, there are plants here and there – but some pay off, and some never reappear at all, which adds further to our dis-ease. We can never be certain of anything in this shifting five-dimensional work.
And Denzel Washington's craft and depth and range are just splendid. As is the rest of the cast, without exception, that I noted.
Though the film may stumble at moments, it dares to do so much that the missteps are forgiven, as might be the few human errors on a wondrous sculpture. The belief one is forced to suspend on occasion is surrendered gladly, for we know that neither life nor real art can be perfect. Both must just do their best.
There has never been a 'perfect' film, and never will be. So we must give the well-crafted superlative near misses the 10's. – in lieu of 9.58's and 9.79's.
'Man on Fire' is a flaring 9.65 – meaning, a '10'.