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Tony Scott has always tried to be a thinking-man's action director. In contrast to Michael Bay's over-the-top, mindless entertainment (Armageddon, Pearl Harbor), Scott has cast strong actors and let them work in relatively relaxed narratives. Think of Gene Hackman and Will Smith in Enemy of the State or Hackman and Denzel Washington in Crimson Tide. Sure, those movies eventually built to massive chase sequences with nail-biting tension, but those were laid over a foundation of characters we cared about. Not to say that everything Scott touches turns to bronze (I give you The Fan or The Last Boy Scout), and I could certainly do without his hyper-kinetic editing style and revolving cameras. But there's at least an attempt to tell a story instead of just bombarding the audience with explosions and special effects.

So it is with Man on Fire, the new movie starring Denzel Washington. Washington plays Creasy, a former counter-intelligence operative whose long years of killing have driven him out of society and into the arms of Jack Daniels. He's come down to Mexico to see his old friend Rayburn (Christopher Walken), who sets him up with a job as a bodyguard. There's been a rash of child kidnappings, and two well-to-do parents (played by singer Marc Anthony and Radha Mitchell) want someone to chaperone their little girl Pita (Dakota Fanning) to school and back.

Washington is reluctant at first, but he has no other options. He makes it clear to the family, though, that he's only a bodyguard, not a friend or companion. Pita doesn't take his stoicism lightly, however. She sits in the front seat of their car and bombards him with questions. She sits in the back seat and mimics his attention to detail. She looks at him across the family's courtyard and lets him know that she likes him, no matter what he's done.

The movie's first hour is a nicely-handled introduction of these relationships. The scenes with Denzel and Christopher Walken have a comfortable, laid-back charm about them, as if these really were two old friends having lunch. It's a shame that Walken's character largely drops out of the movie in the last hour. The same is true for Dakota Fanning, though her disappearance is part and parcel of the script. Still, it's always sad when the best part of a movie is taken from us, and Fanning's relationship with Washington is clearly the strongest aspect of Man on Fire. Their initial scenes, when she tries to break down Creasy's reserve, are fantastic. And when he finally warms up to her and teaches her how to swim, well those moments are genuinely wonderful. These are helped enormously by Fanning's naturalistic style. She first caught our attention in I Am Sam, and she again brings her lovely way of interacting with adults.

Man on Fire is an action movie that doesn't hurry towards the action (hence the 140-minute running time). Scott realizes the more gripping aspects of his story are the relationships, not the explosions. Indeed, when Creasy starts to hunt down the kidnappers, Man on Fire feels perfunctory, as if Scott is going through the motions. Flashy editing and stylized on-screen text are designed to hide the fact that there's little emotional power to Creasy's rampage. This isn't to take anything away from Denzel. He gives a solid performance as always, and his conflicted killer connects with the audience as much as possible. But Fanning and Walken are replaced by two Mexican reformers (played by Giancarlo Giannini and Rachel Ticotin) who show up at exactly the right moments to give Creasy whatever he needs. They're plot devices instead of characters, and the movie suffers for it. Without any other real characters to interact, Creasy becomes simply an angel of vengeance, a variation on Schwarzenegger's death-dealing characters, though Washington certainly has more style and grace.

Even a genuine wrestling with faith can't round out Creasy's character. The movie opens with Creasy and Rayburn reminiscing about old times. Creasy suddenly gets serious and asks, "Do you think God will forgive us for what we've done?" "No," Rayburn thoughtfully replies, to which Creasy responds, "Me neither." For the rest of the film, Creasy struggles with these demons by alternately drinking and reading the Bible. The movie's climax provides a carefully modulated scene of redemption, and yet it falls flat on-screen--the script (by Brian Helgeland) has punished us for an hour, so we're not ready for the quiet moment it offers.

Nonetheless, Man on Fire is an action movie with a brain. Its first half provides some satisfying relationships, and it's always a pleasure to see Denzel work.  

J. Robert Parks  4/26/2004