Man on Fire

D-

Directed by Tony Scott

Tony Scott's "Man on Fire" completely wastes the talents of two of American film's greatest actors, Denzel Washington and Christopher Walken, in an unbelievably lazy action films that manages to be offensive, boring, and laughable, all at the same time.

Washington plays boduguard Creasy, a down on his luck alcoholic who, seeking an outlet to his violent impulses, takes a job as the private protector of a wealthy couple and their daughter in Mexico City. When the daughter is kidnapped, Creasy vows to mete out biblical vengeance on her captors.

This film is, in all aspect, a miss. It's poorly shot, poorly edited, poorly acted by its secondary actors, and most of all extremely poorly scripted. This is a film that likely could have worked fairly easily, seeing as how the premise is simple enough and the producers somehow got Denzel Washington to sign on. Rather than letting the formula play out to its logical conclusion, namely a solid but undistinguished revenge flick, director Scott tries to get fancy and fashion in avant-garde, gritty, crime flick with socio-political undertones. It all falls miserably flat, of course, but there's plenty of blame to go around when a film is this bad. In the case of "Man on Fire," as already mentioned, Washington gets little help from his supporting actors (though Dakota Fanning, despite being miscast, is solid in her role) and the production values of the film are pathetically low for a film with such a significant budget. There's also nothing worse than watching clueless big studio film people try to fashion a political salient film, which this film tries doggedly to be without much success.