(Actually, in the end the Guadalupe shrine in Pita’s house is also tainted by her kidnapping, in a way I can’t explain.)įor some reason I still think of Washington as traditionally playing righteous heroes, though he’s increasingly been turning to darker characters and antiheroes (e.g., John Q, Training Day).
There’s also la Virgen de Guadalupe, prominently displayed in Pita’s parents’ house (Pita’s father says he "worships" her), but also invoked by Pita’s kidnapper. Jude medal Creasy wears around his neck and clutches from time to time, given to him by Pita (Fanning), whom Creasy was hired to bodyguard and in whose memory all his mayhem is wrought. If you don’t find this argument entirely persuasive, perhaps you’ll be reassured by all the religious iconography. Scott’s defense turns on his depiction of Mexico City as a sinkhole of lawlessness and corruption in which the authorities are part of the problem rather than the solution, and unless a man like Creasy starts lopping fingers and blowing up body cavities, little girls like Dakota Fanning ( The Cat in the Hat) will just keep getting kidnapped and murdered. "My job is to arrange the meeting." We know we should agree with Creasy, because his murderous rampage is scored by a cool rock soundtrack and sanctified by a mother’s kiss. "Forgiveness is between them and God," he says, conveniently overlooking the relevant biblical injunctions even though we know he can quote chapter and verse when he wants to. But in Creasy’s book, to forgive is divine, to mutilate and butcher human. "In the Church they say to forgive," one character observes dubiously. Man on Fire is an out-and-out apologia for the necessity of duct-taping a bad guy’s hands to a steering wheel sometimes and lopping off fingers before shooting him in the head, or shoving a crude explosive device into a body cavity of another thug and taunting him with the threat of detonating it before finally going ahead and doing so. But director Tony Scott ( Spy Game) forgives them. Quinnell and previously filmed as a 1987 vehicle for Scott Glenn, Man on Fire is roughly on par with Scott's similar 1990 film Revenge, efficiently satisfying Washington's incendiary bloodlust under a heavy blanket of humid, doom-laden atmosphere.Walken doesn’t think so. even when they're unnecessary! Adapted from a novel by A.J.
Among Scott's more distracting techniques is the use of free-roaming, comic-bookish subtitles. Confidential) sets a solid emotional foundation for Washington's tormented character, and Scott's stylistic excess compensates for a distended plot that's both repellently violent and viscerally absorbing. Prolific screenwriter Brian Helgeland (Mystic River, L.A. The ominous, crime-ridden setting is Mexico City, where a dour, alcoholic warrior with a mysterious Black Ops past (Washington) seeks redemption as the devoted bodyguard of a lovable 9-year-old girl (the precociously gifted Dakota Fanning), then responds with predictable fury when she is kidnapped. Style trumps substance in Man on Fire, a slick, brooding reunion of Crimson Tide star Denzel Washington and director Tony Scott.