Man of Fire

Perfect blend of action, violence, and drama

The Story:

A wave of kidnappings has swept through Mexico, feeding a growing sense of panic among its wealthier citizens, especially parents. This situation leads to many of them hire bodyguards for their children. Into this world enters John Creasy (Denzel Washington), a burned-out ex-CIA operative/assassin, who has given up on life.

Creasy becomes a bodyguard to nine-year-old Pita Ramos (Dakota Fanning), daughter of industrialist Samuel Ramos (Marc Anthony) and his wife Lisa (Radha Mitchell). Creasy barely tolerates the precocious child and her pestering questions about him and his life. But slowly, she chips away at his seemingly impenetrable exterior, his defenses drop, and he opens up to her.

Creasy’s new-found purpose in life is shattered when Pita is kidnapped. Despite being mortally wounded during the kidnapping, he vows to kill anyone involved in or profiting from the kidnapping. And no one can stop him.


Release Date: April 23, 2004 (wide)

Distributor: 20th Century Fox

Directed by: Tony Scott  (Top Gun, Days of Thunder, Enemy of The State, Spy Game)

Starring: Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, Christopher Walken, Giancarlo Giannini, Radha Mitchell, Marc Anthony, Rachel Ticotin, Mickey Rourke

Budget: $70,000,000

Gross Revenue: $$77,894,965 (US) and $130,293,714 (worldwide)

Review:

This movie was the first collaboration of director Tony Scott with Denzel Washington. After this one, they were working together again in DejaVu (2006) and The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009).

Watching this movie was like watching two different films. At the first half you’ll see how John Creasy tried to fit in his new environment. He was hired as a bodyguard by Ramos family to take care of their little daughter.  Being a former assassin who fallen to alcohol, Creasy found a hard time to adept to a “family” concept, especially to little Lisa that desperately tried to get Creasy attention -and love.

Time after time, friendship grew between Creasy and Lisa, but it won’t last long. Later, come a part of this movie that gives a big shock, in front of Creasy’s eyes Lisa got kidnapped after a gunfighting. While Creasy was in hospital recover his wound, the negotiation gone mess, and Lisa was reported killed by her kidnapper.

Heard the sad news, Creasy gone berserk, vow to kill every single one who involved in the kidnapping. He took revenge by slaughtering the bad guys  one by one, only to found that closer he is to the truth, there will be some ugly disclosure behind Lisa’s abduction.

This second part of the movie is fill with well-built action sequence, and more importantly, lots of blood and gore. You’ll see Creasy cut the fingers of a gangster, stuck a bomb into somebody’s ass (literally ), or throw a missile to a corrupt police officers.

This much of violence made this movie receive a negative reviews by the critics. While for myself, it’s still acceptable. Despite there is a little girl on their cast, this movie was never meant for children. Although cliche, there were still some moral lessons we can get from this movie. Man of Fire also one of the best performance character played by Denzel Washington, that we rarely seen from his last few movies.

My Rating: B+

IMDb user rating: 7.7/10

Rotten Tomatoes meter: 39%

Metacritic: 47/100

Yahoo! critics: C+

Yahoo! users: B+

Your Rating: (2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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