Hey folks, Harry here... now - ya gotta watch out on this review, as Professor Bertram Potts (alleged friend of Mr Beaks, which automatically makes him suspect) does enjoy scooping out shovel loads of spoilers in his review. I like this film, don't quite love it. And I agree with some of Bertram's criticisms regarding the end... but kinda felt that given how they established the characters - it had to go in that direction... I just wish it had been a tad more exploitive... but then, I like my revenge bloody and dark as they come. Here ya go... and watch out for spoilers...
MAN ON FIRE
Reviewed by Professor Bertram Potts
In real life, I’d type myself as a card carrying liberal who’s devoutly against the death penalty. If I ever happen into a bar fight, I’m probably fucked. Yet when the lights go down, and somebody’s looking for revenge, man, my bloodlust jumps up to 11. The meaner, the nastier the torture, the more I’m hooting and hollering like a monster truck fan. Perhaps one never outgrows the eleven year old sadist period in one’s life, it just mutates into an itch that only cinema can scratch.
So, for someone such as myself, I should be in hog heaven with no less than three revenge pictures (or four if you included CLIFFORD’S REALLY BIG MOVIE) released within the span of eight days: KILL BILL, VOL. 2, THE PUNISHER and MAN ON FIRE. The later is Tony Scott’s latest epic, and he’s been running on full steam lately, with such projects as ENEMY OF THE STATE and SPY GAME showing that he’s the master of the Bruckheimer-y rapid-editing and panoramic shots. Or at least it should be obvious he’s the master of it because with TOP GUN, Tony invented the style that would serve as the textbook for Michael Bay and Simon West. Hell, for a while there it seemed as though Tony might be the best director in his family, and a Tony renaissance has been brewing since TRUE ROMANCE (Tarantino’s a big fan, and included DAYS OF THUNDER on his SIGHT AND SOUND list of the best ten films of all time).
Unfortunately, MAN ON FIRE is a mixed bag (fitting perfectly between KILL BILL’s brilliance and THE PUNISHER’s suckage) with just enough going for it that it’s not a waste, but with an ending that feels fucked. That said, every once in a while the film feels like a perfect little noir of a damaged hero seeking redemption (think ON DANGEROUS GROUND, or not, since this is nowhere near as good).
Denzel Washington stars as the washed out Creezy, an ex-tough guy for hire who’s hit the bottle because of undisclosed past transgressions. He heads down to Mexico to hang with ex-comrade-in-arms Christopher Walken (it’s hard to say he’s underused in this picture, because when isn’t more Walken a good thing? Still, one wishes he had a bit more to do than his main function, which is to explain how bad ass Creezy can be. [Another parenthetical note: wouldn’t it be great if there were directors’ cuts of Walken pictures, like THE COUNTRY BEARS, and they were advertised by offering 25% more Walken in every disc? I know I’d buy it]). Walken leads him to work as a bodyguard for little girl Pita (Dakota Fanning), because - as the film’s credit sequence tells us - Latin America is rife with kidnappings and extortion, and the police are ineffective at best, and corrupt at worst. Pita’s parents are played by Marc Anthony and Radha Mitchell, and they’ve been advised by their family lawyer (played by Mickey fuckin’ Rourke, also underused) that they need someone like Creezy badly.
The film then takes its time establishing Creezy’s relationship with the tyke; the two actors have a wonderful chemistry together as Creezy gets her readied for a swim meet, and he finds in her his redemption. Then, the unthinkable-though-thinkable-because-there’s-no-movie-if-it-doesn’t-happen happens: the girl is kidnapped, and though Creezy takes out four of the bad guys, he’s shot twice and is unable to stop it. Stuck in a hospital, he doesn’t help with the money exchange, which the police fuck up so badly that Pita is assumed dead.
This then leads to Creezy getting his revenge on, and Creezy (as we are led to believe by Walken) is a bad ass motherfucker who knows how to get people to talk. In fact, in one case writer Brian Hegeland and Scott find the perfect set up for the old punch-line “rectum? Nearly killed ‘em.” And in these brief instances of perfectly engineered bits of sadism the film comes roaring to life as the film deals in the murky grays of such actions, and these sequences make the film’s methodical pacing seem right, as we need time with victims before we see bloodlust as a logical solution (and yeah, that’s a Punisher dig). And it’s here where Washington turns to a reporter (Rachel Ticotin) and an uncorrupt cop (Giancarlo Giannini) for help. Giannini and Ticotin have a great chemistry together as sometime lovers who work symbiotically.
But in the movie’s final stretch it takes some wrongheaded choices for the narrative. The first of which is the most obvious: there’s just too much time where the audience knows Pita must be alive before the characters find out. Cinema has always been cowardly about killin’ youngins ‘cause some people find the idea too horrific to find anything entertaining after something like that happens (which is why ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 and JAWS are so powerfully effective). But when it’s revealed that Pita’s still alive with less than thirty minutes left, it kicks the air out of the movie; at that point, it’s more entertaining if she’s simply dead, and Washington just keeps killing bad people. And the ending, which does make some sense, is too downbeat for the bad ass middle section. We’ve seen Creezy be such a foot to ass master that we want something apocalyptic to happen to the kidnappers; instead, their thread is tied up in an afterthought that is a cheat to both Creezy and the audience. I know I wasn’t the only one hoping Walken would have something to do with Creezy exacting his revenge, but he doesn’t. Damn it. And the film tries to make something big out of Creezy’s redemption, with Creezy reading the bible and his suggestion that “a bullet never lies” after a botched suicide attempt, but the conclusion never ties this up satisfactorily. I “got it,” but I didn’t enjoy it.
The biggest problem with the whole is Scott’s directorial tone. When the credits open the picture it does a lot of blurring, trippy, move the camera a lot, expressionistic stuff, and you hope it’s just a technique cribbed from SE7EN that will come and pass. Nope. Scott uses it throughout to give some stuff a dreamy quality, and it seems a technique that needs another picture or two to mature completely. There’s some great imagery to be found, but it doesn’t mean much. Scott also has a tendency to not let stuff play, and the cutting can be too much at times. Also, someone thought it would be a clever idea to play with how the subtitles are presented as sometimes they come out a word at a time, or hang on screen in reference to what’s happening, or thoughts in someone’s head. I appreciate the attempts at this experimental stuff (and the film is arguably an experimental film), but it’s not smoothed out to fit in with the cohesive whole.
It’s too bad too, because Denzel is really good in this picture. He’s an actor who can’t look uncool on screen, be it HEART CONDITION or THE PELICAN BRIEF, and here is no exception. Meanwhile, Dakota Fanning is effortlessly charming and never gives off creepy child actor vibes. One wonders, in a good way, if she’s simply a 30 year old biological freak (I know I’m stealing and reworking someone else’s line, but it’s a good line, damn it). I was also happy to see Radha Mitchell getting work, as I though she was great in a little B picture few saw called WHEN STRANGERS APPEAR. Anyway, if your expectations are low enough then the middle hour might make it worthwhile. Me, I’m happy I saw it for free.
