Man On Fire

Year: 2004

Grade: B

Country: USA

Director: Scott

Review

pretty good thriller from tony scott (brother of ridley). denzel really is the film, but precocious dakota fanning does a fine job as well. the direction is certainly worthy of note as well. scott edits the shit out of this film, cuts are fast and done in the middle of camera moves/zooms (you can thank die hard for this), colors are exaggerated or forced to blue depending on the mood, subtitles appear on the screen as they might if it were a karaoke and sometimes these subtitles won’t even be translation – they’ll pop up just to visually reinforce an idea or phrase. it’s certainly a bold stylistic move for scott and i think that it’s mostly successful. my major problem with the overall style is that he overuses these ideas. just as ridley scott overused the technique of dropping frames in kingdom of heaven (review below) tony scott overdoes it a bit here. add to that the fact that the film is longish (140 minutes) and you have a film that wears a bit by the end. that said, i liked the film, and washington’s performance, enough to give it a .