Man On Fire [2004] [DVD]

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Product Description ------------------- Tony Scott-directed action thriller starring Denzel Washington as John Creasy, a jaded former CIA agent hired by a wealthy Mexican family to act as bodyguard to their ten-year-old daughter Lupita (Dakota Fanning). Initially reluctant to take on such a lowly position, Creasy becomes increasingly fond of his charge as she asks him questions about his life and he begins to open up to her and discover a tenderness long missing from his own life. But his newfound equilibrium is shattered when the girl is kipped, and he vows to find the men responsible and bring them to his own form of rough justice. The film is a re-make of the 1987 film starring Scott Glenn as Creasy, also based on the A.J. Quinnell novel. .co.uk Review ------------- Style trumps substance in Man on Fire, a slick, brooding reunion of Crimson Tide star Denzel Washington and director Tony Scott. The ominous, crime-ridden setting is Mexico City, where a dour, alcoholic warrior with a mysterious Black Ops past (Washington) seeks redemption as the devoted bodyguard of a lovable 9-year-old girl (the precociously gifted Dakota Fanning), then responds with predictable fury when she is kipped and presumably killed. Prolific screenwriter Brian Helgeland (Mystic River, L.A. Confidential) sets a solid emotional foundation for Washington's tormented character, and Scott's stylistic excess compensates for a distended plot that's both repellently violent and viscerally absorbing. Among Scott's more distracting techniques is the use of free-roaming, comic-bookish subtitles... even when they're unnecessary! Adapted from a novel by A.J. Quinnell and previously filmed as a 1987 vehicle for Scott Glenn, Man on Fire is roughly on par with Scott's similar 1990 film Revenge, efficiently satisfying Washington's incendiary bloodlust under a heavy blanket of humid, doom-laden atmosphere. --Jeff Shannon