Set in a Mexico City depicted as a lawless purgatory of cutthroats and kidnappers, “Man on Fire” starring Denzel Washington may be the most hypertrophic revenge and/or vigilante thriller ever hallucinated across the screen.
The prototype is an obscure Scott Glenn “vehicle” of 1987, a European-made thriller about a pacifist bodyguard who morphs into a ruthless avenger when the girl he’s hired to protect is abducted. The Leonard Maltin movie guide certifies it as a bomb, which may have inspired director Tony Scott and screenwriter Brian Helgeland (“L.A. Confidential,” “Mystic River”), two of the heaviest melodramatic hands in the business, to take no prisoners when transposing the pretext south of the border. Evidently, they were also avid to mimic the fashionable rawness and menace that permeated “Traffic” and “Amores Perros.”
Mr. Washington enters as John Creasy. A conspicuously burnt-out case in shades and scraggly beard, sipping from a flask, Creasy is headed toward a theoretically redemptive and undeniably grueling, mind-boggling gig as bodyguard to adorable little Pita Ramos (Dakota Fanning). She is the only child of an American mother, Lisa (Radha Mitchell), and Mexican father, Sam (Mark Anthony), a struggling but still well-fixed manufacturer who resides in a palace in the capital.
The job has been arranged through the Ramos family lawyer, Jordan Kalfus (Mickey Rourke, hard to recognize in middle age), and a retired government agent, Ray (Christopher Walken), associated with Creasy on missions that seem to have involved a license to kill. They share such portentous exchanges as “Will God forgive us?” “No.”
The endearing segment of the show commences with the entrance of Miss Fanning, the most intelligent-looking actor in American films at the moment. Her lovability finally brings a smile to the face of Creasy, whom she likens to a big old sad, brooding bear. Conquering suicidal despair and the bottle, he becomes so fond of the child that he takes four bullets and nails four perps on the occasion of her abduction. Upon recuperating, he embraces a mission of retribution highlighted by a pair of torture sessions and the torching of a disco, where the customers are so far gone that they really dig his flamboyance.
A good deal of the movie unfolds in self-conscious fever dreams. Mr. Scott fragments and torments his imagery in ways that maximize nervous exhaustion and dynamic confusion. It’s often impossible to tell which of his stylizations is meant to approximate reality. The ransom exchange is the most conspicuous example. Pictorially, it’s as weirded-out as a Creasy nightmare that depicts the hero oozing blood in a pool while submerged with the vanished Pita.
“Man on Fire” is ruthlessly arbitrary and opportunistic about the way it champions a severely wounded but indomitable man of action. The plot can be detected unraveling on contact, but it may prove deliriously entertaining to dissect the shambles in retrospect. Starting with the nagging question, “Why was a guy with Creasy’s deadly resume hired in the first place?” The only plausible answer: to clean house in Godforsaken Mexico.
**
TITLE: “Man on Fire”
RATING: R (Frequent graphic violence, with gruesome illustrative details; occasional profanity and vulgarity; thematic concentration on vice and crime; fleeting sexual candor)
CREDITS: Directed by Tony Scott. Screenplay by Brian Helgeland, based on a novel by A.J. Quinnell. Cinematography by Paul Cameron. Production design by Chris Seagers and Benjamin Fernandez. Costume design by Louise Fragle. Music by Harry Gregson-Williams. Some dialogue in Spanish with English subtitles
RUNNING TIME: 146 minutesMAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS
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