Man on Fire

Continuing the recent tradition of a return to old school big-bang action films comes Man On Fire.

The latest Tony Scott offering sees Denzel Washington take on the role of John Creasy, an ex-CIA operative who moves to Mexico as part of a bodyguard job for a businessman's daughter. Going from suicidal to an almost family man, Creasy begins to learn how to be himself again with the help of his charge, Pita (Dakota Fanning). When she is then kidnapped by Mexican criminals and held for ransom it hurts Creasy all the more. After recovering from the shoot out which ensued, Creasy learns of the failed payment to the criminals and decides to take down every single person who had a part in harming Pita. Joining Washington and Fanning is a respectable cast including Christopher Walken, Mickey Rourke and Rachel Tioctin, do bear in mind though that Walken and Rourke play very minimal roles and the movie is literally carried by Washington and to a lesser extent Fanning.

Starting at an extremely slow pace Man On Fire really gives the impression that it's going to be nothing but self-realisation and warm fuzzy feelings. On his first night in Mexico Creasy attempts suicide, only for the bullet to be a dud. From here on in we see Pita try to break through his tough shell and find out more about her bodyguard. Around half of the film is dedicated to this, as Creasy slowly begins to warm to Pita and open up to her. When she has a school swimming race coming up he decides to help her out and quickly they begin to bond.

Quite frankly the first half begins to get boring; while building the story up is vital to the film there is nothing that catches your attention about this relationship, it's a pretty standard attempt at heart warming. Once Pita is abducted, the movie takes on an entirely different angle going from slow dialogue scenes to fast paced panic. Creasy, who is shot during the kidnapping, vows to kill each and every person involved in the crime, and once he gets fit he goes about acquiring a huge range of weaponry. Any attempts at snappy dialogue are thrown out the window as the remainder of the film descends into a killing spree of huge explosions and elaborate executions. With the help of a crime journalist Creasy attempts to make his way to the top of the biggest Mexican crime gang in return for giving her a great story.

Generally this film is good but not great. The fact that the action and the dialogue are so segregated makes the film slightly schizophrenic, but still easy to keep up with. Washington does do a good job of his role, but it's not up to the standards seen in Training Day. Fanning on the other hand does the impossible and avoids being an annoying little kid but rather a charming and likable 'Pita'. The action scenes themselves are impressive if not slightly silly and some of the methods used by Creasy are inventive enough to make any self respecting sadist smile just a little. The plot line is by no means new to anyone, but it takes enough interesting turns to keep you watching right until the end.

Just don't expect any ground breaking storylines here, just something slightly above the average blood-fest. On the negative side of things the action is so big and over the top it makes it hard to take seriously (if you were supposed, to that is). The fact that it jumps out from behind the first and most sappy act makes it all the harder to adjust to. For those of you who love cheesy quotes there are some gems in there too, the best one being Christopher Walken's character Rayburn as he warns a cop to steer clear from Creasy's war-path. "A man can be an artist in anything. In food, whatever... it depends on how good he is at it. Creasy's art is death... he's about to paint his masterpiece." Grade A cheddar there, folks!

The production itself is interesting, if not a little pompous. Set naturally in Mexico, the scenery is quite exotic and varied. The techniques used by Scott swing between clever and irritating, for example the attempted suicide scene at the beginning is laden with Nine Inch Nails tracks from "The Downward Spiral", and is fused together with distorted flashbacks and grainy imagery - extremely suitable for such a hectic scene. Then the same distorted and twisted camera tricks are applied randomly around the movie with no obvious purpose, which is quite annoying.

Given that the movie is based in Mexico, Spanish is used just as often as English, avoiding the regular subtitles across the bottom of the screen, Scott gives more life to them, so they appear on various sections of the screen, often indicating who is saying what. They also fade in and out of image, or scroll up letter by letter as the words are spoken. It's a very basic trick, but it makes the subtitles part of the movie rather than something that was just stuck on at the end because it had to be.

If you are willing to sit through a pretty plain first act you are bound to be entertained by the explosions, either because you're laughing at the silliness of them or because you just love seeing big action. From the man who brought us "Spy Game" and "Enemy of the State" it really is nothing that you wouldn't expect. What Man on Fire does do however is reinforce the current theory that action films are now returning to their 1980's heritage after a brief stint of slightly less manly heroes. Perhaps The Rock, Vin Deisel and at least in this movie Denzel Washington will re-claim action from the likes of Spiderman and re-associate "action" with "balls out over-the-top blood and gore" but quite frankly I think we've had enough of them.

Adam Maguire
Staff Writer, Kikizo Movies