Wonderful, Sometimes Great, Nonsense !

Rating: 8/10 (26 January 2010)

The story is like (Beauty and The Beast) meets (The Count of Monte Cristo) with a third act that carries a twist which could stand for a different concept about revenge. Although the rage and insistence that the revenge creates put this man on fire, even burned him, but it managed eventually to secure a fire escape for this beast (Creasy / Cristo), and, surprisingly this time, his Beauty as well, to represent a reprisal, or a revival, more than just another - so customary - retortion. And by that, it discovers a new catchy talent in the revenge's value where it can bring who or what we avenge for back to life.
Tony Scott did it fine. Maybe too fine as he never did before. It's surely one climax for him as a director. His video clip style reaches a new sky this time. The thing is that his crazy technique clicked. And unlike movies like (Domino - 2005), it was so perfect to tell this story in specific, pulling off expressing it whether sensitively or violently. He could put simple yet genius touches here and there, taking his style, rather This style, to the next level. For instance, seeing the dead girl as a miserable ghost to comment on how she was a victim of everybody's greed and treachery, recalling some memories while some events related only by the lead's inner pain, seeing the lead bleeding in the swimming pool / dying out of sadness, or putting a shot from the end in the beginning; where Washington, in a second, is about to die in a car while the scene of entering the city in another car; as the forewords indicate the aftermaths. All of these moments consolidated the special character of the movie, invested the video clip for embodying stream of consciousness, and exalted this genre commercial movie to be something to explore and enjoy like a good book.
The soundtrack wasn't less interesting. There are some effective music tracks to complete this impassioned ocean of images. From classic music and Operas (Chopin, Debussy's Clair de Lune, or Nessun Dorma from "Turandot") that touch the lead's noble and sublime side through his relationship with the child, even during his revenge. To Latino tracks that mirror the atmosphere. Ending with loud stuff to embody the lead's crazy beastly condition while his crusade of a rage. And to top it all, Carlos Varela's, with no music, version of "Una Palabra" while handing over the kid which I bet it won the viewers' hearts. Then Harry Gregson-Williams & Lisa Gerrard's "Creasy Dies" as the highest end this movie could get. By the way, after one year, the Indian remake (Ek Ajnabee) would make something I thought the original missed; putting an especially written-for-the-movie song to distinguish the man and the kid's relationship.
However, while being wonderful, sometimes great, it's still nothing but nonsense. The awful plot holes, the many unanswered questions, and the big unreal action scenes depreciate the movie considerably. And as thoughtless mistakes, it was an insult to a movie that speaks visually to your thinking. For instance, the movie said nothing about how the dad was involved in the kidnapping. It was the insurance money, but after 2 viewings I knew it from a friend's guesswork! His suicide looked absurd. Keeping the girl alive makes no sense at all, "I'm a businessman" isn't an enough justification, and since the kidnapper is that businessman, why he didn't negotiate earlier?! How to execute so easily a known governmental official naked with a big bomb under a capital's bridge among many crowded streets, and in the daylight, let alone GETTING AWAY WITH IT?? That's too-unbelievable-it's-dumb! And why they didn't kill the lead right after handing over the child?? Well, the answer for all of that and more is one: it is nonsense. Namely another mindless and unrealistic revenge movie. Entertaining, yes, but not as high as what its expressive language reached sometimes.
As always, I hated the violence, the foul language, and Dakota Fanning! She's supposed to be a cute child, but what I saw was a thirty-something Julia Roberts! She's supposed to be spontaneously infantile, but Fanning is always acting as a woman, annoying woman! And finally we're supposed to love her, be in mourning for her, though I was so unhappy that she was alive at last. Look at her talking to Washington in their last scene; this is absolutely NO 8-year-old child!
Mexico City looked like a very evil, poor, and rotten place. Scott drew it with live colors and dirt. It was just streets of corrupted policemen, politicians, even rich people, and shanty town that swarms with drugs, weapons and dirty money. In a word: a hell of crime. So he had to write at the end "Thanks to it, it is a special place". It reminded me with (Mr. Magoo - 1997) when they apologized for the blind people after its end. This "blind" vision is natural part of any nonsense. Where everything is used for the bigger purpose, which's here making the lead find his purgation with the lowest persons, by the lowest ways, in the lowest places. Despite how low that may sound for some!
Still the best about this movie is the way its story was told. (Man on Fire) is a memorably proficient sonic and visual experience. It's another revenge story, but in not another rampant video clip for Tony Scott. Here what Oliver Stone does with serious issues had been done with droll stuff to uplift it. Maybe, just maybe, Michael Bay would be watching and learn himself a lesson!