Man on Fire

[umema waheed]

Man on Fire



Why blame only Indian films? Formula filmmaking prevails in every part of the world. The way the formula goes depends entirely on the way the filmmaker takes it.

Tony Scott, who has so far given us some terrific optic energizers like "Top Gun" and "Enemy Of The State", uses the camera as a restless ally in "Man on Fire".

No shot in the film lasts for more than a few seconds. And yet there's a stillness to this film, missing from Tony Scott's other fidgety 'feel-cool feel-hot' thrillers.

Scott instills a great deal of warmth in the relationship that grows between the washed-out cop, Creasy (Denzel Washington) and the nine-year-old heiress Pinta (Dakota Fanning).

Part of this formulistic film's hushed projection of a seething, simmering scenario can be traced to the lead pair.

Of late, Denzel Washington has been doing a lot of films. Though he remains consistently watchable, even surprising, he has seldom been able to instil the kind of riveting depth within an inherently shallow situation by simply being detached from the material.

The girl with whom Washington is thrown together constantly also deserves special mention. Little Dakota Fanning, so solemn sensitive and natural, can give our desi Baby Hansikas of Bollywood a run for their money.

Fanning's scenes with Washington as she's driven to school are priceless. Scott creates a sweaty and startling environment around the perfectly ill matched two-some. The bodyguard is pushing 40, black sullen and traumatized... his little companion is pushing 10, Anglo-saxon, pleasant and curious.

The Mexican heat and sweat are energetically expended into machinations of the kidnapping industry. The focus, rightly and winsomely, is the progressive bonding between the two unlikely and yet utterly complementary allies.

Unlike Harold Becker's "Mercury Rising" where Bruce Willis had to protect an autistic child, here the normalcy and world-weariness of the little girl who knows about the exact nature of the danger surrounding her is perfectly balanced against the self-absorbed cynicism of her protector.

The editing and the music score are outstandingly mood-motivated. Everyone on the streets of Mexico (portrayed as a crime-field) is suspect. And even little Pinta talks of kidnapping casually, as though it's part of her existence.

Interestingly the plot withholds the actual crisis to build on the bonding, so that when Pinta is whisked away we're emotionally prepared to share her bodyguard's anguish.

Slickly packaged and designed to create a pyramid of emotions and action "Man On Fire" is actually a far superior film than its formulistic genre suggests, and definitely a better film than all of Denzel Washington's recent output including the over-rated Oscar-winning "Training Day".

They should give Washington and his little co-star Oscars for holding up such a flimsy plot with such élan.