In Man on Fire, Tony Scott goes deeper into the dark side of human nature than he has ever gone before. His previous works explore the inner conflicts of troubled men, especially as those men run up against other troubled men. If the endings haven’t always been happy, at least their ideals won out. In Top Gun, Maverick doesn’t get the prize, but he gets the girl, and both Hunter and Ramsey are exonerated for acting according to their principles aboard the USS Alabama.
But in Man on Fire, the second collaboration between Scott and star Denzel Washington, the depths are lower than any submarine can attain, and the stakes are higher than an F-14 ever flew. And in that sense, Scott has outdone himself. The battle in Crimson Tide is for the fate of the world, but in Man on Fire, it’s for one man’s soul. If it seems there’s no comparison, it must be realized that the title character, Creasy, is the personification of all of us, the tortured face of all our sins, exposed to the world. If there’s no redemption for Creasy, neither is there any for us.
Creasy is a man with a vague but violent past. He drinks, plays with guns, and quotes the Bible. “Do you think God will ever forgive us for what we’ve done?” he asks Rayburn, a former colleague played by Christopher Walken. There’s no answer to this question, but by the end of the film, if anyone can earn forgiveness surely Creasy has done so. He does it not by running from who he is and what he’s done, but by embracing it. “Creasy’s art is death,” explains Rayburn, “and he’s about to paint his masterpiece.”
Creasy takes a job as a bodyguard to the only child of a wealthy family in Mexico City. It is apparently a fact that in Mexico kidnapping is an industry and corruption runs rampant (I would not presume to assert this, but Mexican acquaintances confirm that this is true to their experience), so the presence of bodyguards is a part of life. The Mexican businessman husband, played laudably by actor/singer Marc Anthony, and the American wife, played by Radha Mitchell, are movers and shakers in Mexico City, so they leave their daughter Pita home alone with the bodyguard quite often. Pita, played with convincing and compelling depth by Dakota Fanning, reaches out to Creasy.
Pita is everything that Creasy isn’t. He is darkness and she is light…down to her pale skin and fair hair. He is tortured, she is happy. He is suicidal, she is optimistic. He is a loner, she cares for others. He has nothing to lose, and she is sometimes afraid. He doesn’t see everything he should, and she sees more than he realizes. He trusts nobody, and she trusts him. A strange friendship grows between the two, and in her presence we see him struggling to embrace the hope he gave up on so long ago.
I can’t say any more about the plot without giving too much away. But the rest of the film is some of the most compelling and intense drama on recent film. It’s hard to watch sometimes, but the viewer can’t look away. It’s imperative to us that Creasy succeed with his mission, no matter what the cost; we have invested everything in this character, and Washington and Scott make us feel that our very souls rest in Creasy’s hands.
The script is generally well done, flowing back and forth easily between English and Spanish, with an interesting interpretive use of subtitles. There are a few holes in the story (Creasy just ups and stops drinking? Where’d Rayburn disappear to?), but they don’t call attention to themselves at the time. We’re too invested in the story. And kudos go to Mickey Rourke, who plays one of the sleaziest lawyers on film, and Giancarlo Giannini and Rachel Tocotin as the government official and reporter who help Creasy in his search for redemption.
Scott and DP Paul Cameron take an unusually experimental approach with some of the photography in the film. They’re obviously trying to use unconventional filters, frames, and angles to reflect the state of Creasy’s emotions. I wish they wouldn’t; the segments are distracting and disorienting, pulling the viewer out of the story rather than illustrating it. Washington’s performance is compelling enough on its own to convey his state of mind; we don’t need artsy techniques to get the point.
I recommend this film, but for adults only. And only then when you can sit and give it some time, because Man on Fire will command all your attention and emotional energy. But it’s well worth the investment.
Popularity: 32% [?]
Leave a Reply