"Wrecked 'im? Blew 'im to pieces, Miss"

Rating: Null/10 (12 September 2009)

Denzel Washington is a fine actor but, for me, he's at his weakest when playing villains (American Gangster), or troubled, moody men as he does here. That's not to say he doesn't give a good performance, but he wouldn't have been my choice for the part of John Creasey, a disillusioned, borderline alcoholic former agent who takes a job as bodyguard to the daughter of a wealthy young Mexican man and his American wife. The Mexican guy isn't as wealthy as many people believe, which is why he employs Creasey, a choice he comes to regret when little Pita (Dakota Fanning) is predictably kidnapped.
Man on Fire isn't exactly a forthcoming film, releasing information to the viewer on a strictly need-to-know basis (if that). As far as I'm aware, we never find out how Creasey came by the wounds on the back of his hand that Scott's cameraman seems so fascinated by, nor much about why he is so troubled in the film's early stages. It's almost as if a whole chunk of back story has been unceremoniously dumped in an attempt to trim down a running time which, at nearly two-and-a-half-hours, is still twenty minutes too long.
Creasey develops a close relationship with his precocious little charge (Fanning's character is eight-going-on-forty-five) which is over-played a little immediately before her abduction, and he is overcome with a murderous desire for vengeance when he awakens from a coma to discover the handover of the ransom money was botched and she has been murdered. Before you can say 'superhero' Creasey is ignoring the two bullet wounds he has recently suffered and running around Mexico City knocking off members of the shadowy organisation he discovers are responsible for her death.
This is an entertaining enough film, and the plot holes aren't too irritating, even though one of the twists is fairly predictable. I was definitely entertained as I watched, and the lengthy running time only started to tell in the last reel as the film seemed to struggle to tie up all its loose ends. Scott's edgy style of direction works very well at some points but smacks of 'look at me' self-satisfaction at other times and, as is so often the case, the flashy direction merely serves to distance the viewer from the story as we focus on all the jigging about the picture is doing (when I was a kid we'd have had the TV repairman out to some of the stuff that's going on here.) The story itself becomes less of a study of one man's slow descent into self-destruction (which isn't really that interesting anyway) and more of a straightforward action-revenge movie following Creasey's emergence from his coma – which is probably when most of the target audience will perk up.
Creasey's methods of execution are certainly imaginative: I'm pretty sure that never before in the history of cinema has a character suffered death by 'bum bomb' before so Man on Fire can give itself a little 'pat' on the back for that one, although personally I can't imagine any injustice great enough to compel me to consider going anywhere near another man's bottom to seek revenge. I've got to admit that, for one mad moment, I did think that was going to be the movie's final twist, judging by how gingerly Denzel hobbled over that bridge to meet his fate, but thankfully it wasn't to be.