In his somewhat uneven record of achievement in
cinema, the English director Tony Scott exhibits a certain faith in the tried
and the true, especially if he is the one who did the trying.
His
earliest big success, Top Gun (1986),
for example, starred Tom Cruise as a hot dog jet pilot who grows into maturity
and manhood. He repeated the formula less successfully a few years later in Days of Thunder (1990), with Tom Cruise
once again, only this time as a hot dog racecar driver who grows into maturity
and manhood, and wins the affections of Nicole Kidman as well.
In
between those movies, he made Beverly
Hills Cop II, another repetition, an inferior effort at copying the
commercial success of a slick, dumb, exaggerated original. It’s not always a
good idea to be the second one to jump on a bandwagon.
On
the other hand, like his older, more accomplished brother Ridley, he also
demonstrates an ability to entertain an audience within the requirements of the
Hollywood style. His work includes a number of well made genre pictures, like Crimson Tide, The Fan, and Enemy of the
State, which generally display the visual polish and narrative momentum
usually associated with the best traditions of American popular film.
He
has also worked successfully with some outstanding and confident contemporary
actors, including Robert De Niro, Gene Hackman, and Denzel Washington, which
indicates an aptitude for performers accompanying his apparent sense of the
camera.
In
his latest film, essentially a formulaic revenge thriller, Scott again directs
Denzel Washington. He revisits some of the subjects and themes that dominate Revenge, one of his least known
pictures.
In Man on Fire Washington plays John
Creasy, a burned-out former government counter-insurgency agent — which
translates as professional assassin — who apparently bears a heavy burden of
guilt for unspecified murders all over the world. Instead of killing people, he
now wonders if God will forgive him for what he has done and seeks the answer
in many hours of devotion to bourbon and the Bible.
An
old colleague in Mexico, played by Christopher Walken, persuades Creasy to
apply for the job of bodyguard to the daughter of a wealthy Mexican businessman
married to an American. Despite his background and his drinking, the couple
hires him to protect their ten-year-old, Lupita (Dakota Fanning), from the
ubiquitous threat of kidnapping.
In
the familiar Hollywood tradition, the daily companionship of the little girl
begins to soften Creasy’s granite stoicism. He helps her with her homework,
coaches her in swimming, and becomes a kind of surrogate father.
When
some corrupt Mexican cops (something of a redundancy) in league with their
version of the Mafia, kidnap Pita and seriously wound Creasy, the bodyguard,
aware that he failed to protect the child he had learned to love, vows
vengeance.
He
embarks on a manhunt, gathering information through torture and leaving a
bloody trail of corpses in his wake. As Walken points out, Creasy is an artist
of death and he is painting his masterpiece.
Creasy’s
relentless progress through the Mexican underworld, the shootings and bombings,
the several twists and turns of the plot, all follow a most predictable
pattern. To impart some originality to a familiar narrative replete with the
usual violence, Scott employs virtually every visual trick in the thick book of
the cinema.
From
beginning to end of a long movie, the screen image seldom remains static from
one sequence to another. The frame freezes or jumps and shifts and even alters
in size. The camera rapidly racks focus. The tempo constantly changes, running
through a dizzying variety of speeds, from pixilation through super-fast
motion.
The
filters frequently transform the values, from black and white to variations on
color schemes. The numerous flashbacks and flash forwards provide momentary
back story and even a kind of foreshadowing. All the gimmicks turn a relatively
routine revenge story into a nervous, edgy exercise in visual violence.
Aside
from the showy camera work, the picture features a cast full of fine actors,
especially the incomparable Christopher Walken, who lends his hollow voice and
carefully arrhythmic diction to a slightly less eccentric role than usual, and
the pleasantly world-weary Giancarlo Giannini as the head of the Mexican
version of the FBI.
The
movie otherwise depends on the compelling presence of Denzel Washington, who
has proved his worth in a number of challenging performances. His quiet voice,
his deliberate speaking style, his offhand manner, combined with a powerful
screen presence, establish him as one of the best film actors of his
generation.
His
air of calm authority and his palpable strength of personality enable his
character to perpetrate some terrific violence but somehow attain some measure
of righteousness, appropriately seeming a man on fire.
Man on Fire, starring Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, Christopher Walken,
Giancarlo Giannini; based on the novel by A.J. Quinnel; screenplay by Brian
Helgeland; directed by Tony Scott. Cinemark Tinseltown; Hoyts Greece Ridge;
Loews Webster; Pittsford Plaza Cinema; Regal Culver Ridge; Regal Eastview;
Regal Henrietta.
This article appears in Apr 28 – May 4, 2004.
