Man on Fire (2004)

Not to be confused with Man on Wire, this title had turned me off for a long time. When I saw that I could watch it free on Hulu, I looked it up and found that it was much better received by the general audience than by critics. That gets me curious.

Since holding rich kids for ransom is rampant in Mexico, troubled ex-Marine John Creasy (Denzel Washington), at the advice of a buddy (Christopher Walken), becomes a bodyguard to Lupita or "Pita" (Dakota Fanning), preteen daughter of automaker Samuel Ramos (Marc Anthony). At first he is highly standoffish, but as she urges him to be as sociable as others, he learns to like her. Of course, this wouldn't be much of a story if he never failed at his job....

No, he doesn't spend much of the movie trying to rescue Pita. Samuel is prepared to pay the asking price, but after the drop goes sideways, the kidnapper (Roberto Sosa) leads the Ramoses to assume the worst. Once Creasy recovers from nearly fatal wounds sustained in his botched defense and his attorney (Mickey Rourke) ensures that a corrupt system won't jail him, he decides to go John Wick on everyone involved in the abduction, with detective assistance from a reporter (Rachel Ticotin) eager to expose the operation.

That last sentence may be an understatement. Wick kills a lot of people, including reluctant cooperators, but I don't remember him torturing anyone first. Some of Creasy's methods are too grotesque to describe here. Also, he doesn't come across as invincible, thanks partly to his suicidal ideation.

JW has much better pacing to boot. Given how many of the 146 minutes of MoF focus on what happens before the kidnapping, it feels like a major genre shift. Even afterward, we get only so much adrenaline-pumping action. There's no real climax.

I doubt the movie could be made this way anymore, for more reasons than pacing. Just having an Anglo actress play a half-Latina (Radha Mitchell plays her mother) risks outrage. Modern Hollywood may not want to emphasize the criminal element of Mexico either. And while it's hard to feel sorry for any of the crooks, what Creasy does to them is equally hard to enjoy.

At best, I come halfway between the critics and the general audience on MoF. Perhaps it's just as well that the ending doesn't brook a sequel.