Man on Fire

Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, Marc Anthony, Christopher Walken. A burned-out CIA agent travels to Mexico to take a job as the bodyguard for a wealthy industrialist's daughter. But when the girl is kidnapped, he launches a one-man rescue mission. 2004/color/146 min/R/widescreen.

Style trumps substance in IMan on Fire/I, a slick, brooding reunion of ICrimson Tide/I star Denzel Washington and director Tony Scott. The ominous, crime-ridden setting is Mexico City, where a dour, alcoholic warrior with a mysterious Black Ops past (Washington) seeks redemption as the devoted bodyguard of a lovable 9-year-old girl (the precociously gifted Dakota Fanning), then responds with predictable fury when she is kidnapped. Prolific screenwriter Brian Helgeland (IMystic River/I, IL.A. Confidential/I) sets a solid emotional foundation for Washington's tormented character, and Scott's stylistic excess compensates for a distended plot that's both repellently violent and viscerally absorbing. Among Scott's more distracting techniques is the use of free-roaming, comic-bookish subtitles... Ieven when they're unnecessary/I! Adapted from a novel by A.J. Quinnell and previously filmed as a 1987 vehicle for Scott Glenn, IMan on Fire/I is roughly on par with Scott's similar 1990 film IRevenge/I, efficiently satisfying Washington's incendiary bloodlust under a heavy blanket of humid, doom-laden atmosphere. I--Jeff Shannon/I