Movies…with a little bit of obscure culture and sports mixed in
Denzel Washington being an absolute madman mixed with Christopher Walken’s charismatic sleepwalking blended with Tony Scott’s drug-induced editing style makes for a vicarial viewing experience.
“In Mexico City, a former CIA operative swears vengeance on those who committed an unspeakable act against the family he was hired to protect.”
Director: Tony Scott
Writers: A.J. Quinnell, Brian Helgeland
Starring: Denzel Washington, Christopher Walken, Dakota Fanning, Radha Mitchell, Marc Anthony, Giancarlo Giannini, Mickey Rourke
Release Date: April 23, 2004
IMDB
Sometimes a movie hits you at the perfect moment in life and sticks with you forever. Such a movie is Man On Fire. Denzel Washington being an absolute madman mixed with Christopher Walken’s charismatic sleepwalking blended with Tony Scott’s drug-induced editing style makes for a vicarial viewing experience. Man On Fire is a heartfelt drama with a super-sized dose of creative, bloody violence.
But to put in plainly, it’s fun to watch Denzel Washington be a badass and kill people.
The plot of the movie is simple, just look at the tagline: “Revenge is a meal best served cold.”
John Creasy (Denzel Washington) is an ex-government operative who has fallen in love with the bottle as a way to deal with his traumatizing past. Creasy meets up with former co-worker and friend Paul Rayburn (Christopher Walken) down in Mexico City who offers him a security job.
Creasy is hired out by Samuel Ramos (Marc Antony) to protect his daughter Pita (Dakota Fanning) at the behest of her mother Lisa (Radha Mitchell). Mexico City has a rampant child abduction problem and the Ramos family has old money that makes Pita a prime target. The partnership between Creasy and Pita starts out frosty but blossoms into deep love. There is a mutual educational relationship between the two with Pita teaching Creasy how to be a loving human again and Creasy teaching Pita how to excel at her swimming passion.
The first half of the movie is a drama, and the second half turns into a tour of violent depravity. Pita is kidnapped and Creasy is shot multiple times attempting to save her. After the Ramos family has their attempted rescue meetup blown up by gun fire, it seems as if getting Pita back alive isn’t in the cards.
Luckily for Pita and the Ramos family, there is only one tool left in the shed. The old reliable one-man army.
Creasy begins hunting down those who took Pita. The ways in which he procures information from the villainous infestation of criminals are painful and creative. As the film reaches its climax, the breath of Creasy’s past deadly talents become illuminated by the viewers. However, despite the dark truth of what Creasy’s capable of becoming more apparent, we the audience can’t help but cheer on this camouflaged crusader as he works his way through the Mexico City underworld in order to save Pita before it’s too late.
Man On Fire plays out like a new-age roller coaster slowly rolling you up to the starting point before jettisoning you off at 100 MPH. And once you have begun moving, there is no stopping. It’s full-tilt, no brakes, pedal on the metal adrenaline once Denzel Washington and Tony Scott open it up, and the satisfaction of that rush wishes you had more time before the credits roll.
Can you guess where I am going to segway too next. If you have seen the movie, perhaps you are picking up on it.
Man On Fire is one of the most quotable movies of all-time. I say that with zero hyperbole. The script of A.J. Quinnell and Brian Helgeland has Creasy and Rayburn delivering some of the most profunct lines ever put to screen. These quotes sound like they belong in a made-for-tv movie, but because of the quality of Man On Fire the movie and the talent of the actors involved, these punctuated statements live on as some of movie fans most beloved.
Let’s start with this”
Elderly Man: In the church, they say to forgive.
Creasy: Forgiveness is between them and God. It’s my job to arrange the meeting.
Elderly Man: In the church, they say to forgive.
Creasy: Forgiveness is between them and God. It’s my job to arrange the meeting.
If you heard the line itself with no visuals, you’d know that Creasy is a bad, bad man. But when you throw in the fact that he is loading up a bazooka in an elderly couple’s apartment while they are watching…well that just adds to the lore and mystique. Ice cold.
Creasy: I wish you had more time.
Personally, I quote this line all the time. Do yourself a favor and drop this line at the end of a sporting event when the clock is winding down as your team wins. Say with the same confidence and dictation as Creasy. It will make you feel like you can control the universe’s clock.
And then there is the explosion. And how the explosion happened. Creasy puts explosives in this corrupt officials bum, and then Creasy walks away as this bum gets blown to smithereens. And you know what I am going to say next. Creasy doesn’t turn and look. Not even for a second. Cool guys don’t look at explosions, and perhaps Denzel Washington is the coolest of them all.
Rayburn: A man can be an artist… in anything, food, whatever. It depends on how good he is at it. Creasy’s art is death. He’s about to paint his masterpiece.
Everything about this is perfect. The start of the speech when Rayburn is telling Miguel Manzano (Giancarlo Giannini) that Pita showed Creasy “it was alright to live again.”. It is hard not to get goosebumps. The musical beat drops in as Miguel’s facial expression aggressively portrays Oh, boy. It is goosebump inducing.
Walken, who is throwing 1,000 MPH the entire movie, paints this bif of his performance on the black. The way he licks his fingers and adds in the “food, whatever” pausing phrase before the punchline is really improvisational perfection. He then states “Creasy’s art is death. He’s about to paint his masterpiece.” in such a matter-of-fact way, it’s terrifying. Rayburn knows that there is nothing the kidnappers, the authorities or Mexico City itself can do to stop Creasy from unleashing his fury.
The catalytic moment in Man On Fire is when Pita is kidnapped in front of Creasy. It is the first time we see our scarred hero fire a weapon at others, and the once shaky handed man handles himself well. The way that Tony Scott orchestrates the assault ensures that tension is always ratcheted. The screams of Dakota Fanning as Pita still ring in the eardrums after the moment concludes. Scott’s admittedly mushroomy editing style whirs the audience around, but stops just enough for us to notice that there are police vehicles who are preventing Creasy and Pita from escaping. It is Mexico City after all.
Part of what makes the kidnapping so visceral is that you do not want to see Pita taken away from Creasy. The relationship that the two characters created over the first hour of the film is truly heartwarming, and would you believe me if I told you that it was the child version of Dakota Fanning who led Denzel Washington to water?
No joke, Dakota Fanning is phenomenal as Pita. She goes toe-to-toe with Denzel, matching his sorrow with an unwavering smile. Pita kills Creasy with kindness. Man On Fire would not be the same movie if Dakota Fanning didn’t take this role and run away with it. Child actors are a fickle thing, but this time around there is no fragility with the role. The conversations that Pita and Creasy have are as fluid as a body of water, ebbing and flowing with subtle smiles and inspirational filled “off the block” training.
For a secondary character, Rayburn is throwing heat. That has already been covered. Christopher Walken is playing with a full deck of cards and raking in the chips. Samuel Ramos, played by Marc Antony (yes, that Marc Antony), has the stress of running the crumbling family business. For a second you feel bad for the man, but there comes a point in the story where your perception of him swings 180 degrees. While it’s a sad revelation in terms of the story, the unveiling of the truth leads to another all-time Denzel moment.
If we need to put the stink bug on anyone, which would probably be best for objectivity, the scarlet letter wearer is Radha Mitchell as Lisa Ramos. The character obviously loves her daughter and she obviously feels out of place on purpose living in Mexico City. The framing of Lisa, the character, makes sense. The execution is a bit off. The bright highlighter quality that Man On Fire has on the whole isn’t transferred in Radha’s performance. She is a pencil while everyone else is a permanent marker.
Two other important characters that must be touched on a smidge. Miguel is the government official who has not been corrupted by the land he lives in (yet), and his main way of undermining the corrupt officials is by leaking information to Mariana Garcia Guerrero (Rachel Ticotin). Mariana is a news reporter not afraid to ruffle feathers. Her presence is a neat wrinkle, but perhaps it’s not as flushed out as it could be.
While nothing now could recapitulate the energy of Tony Scott’s Man On Fire, you could reenter this violent world of Mexico City through the lens of Mariana and Miguel in the present day. Two decades have passed, which begs the question; how have these people changed? Are they still working together? What happened to their odd sexual chemistry? What would happen if Pita returned to Mexico City and found herself in need of their assistance once again?
It’s fan fiction, but I am for it.
Thankfully, we do have a reunion between Dakota Fanning and Denzel Washington with The Equalizer 3 (2023).
Man On Fire has the Stanko “Must Watch” staple for an action movie lover. The movie swings for the fences and by the end you’ll be watching a truly abhorrently beautiful home run derby of Washington driven violence.
The best little tid-bit about my viewing experience of Man On Fire is that it was the final movie of 2023 that Emma and I watched together. Do you know what movie we began 2023 with? Heat (1995). What a way to bookmark the year.
STANKO RATING: B+
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