Man on Fire (2004)
You have seen the bones of Man on Fire before, probably several times over. A burnt-out, hard-drinking former operative reluctantly takes a job protecting a young girl; they clash, they bond, she is snatched, and he sets about a merciless campaign to get her back. It is the same template that powers everything from Taken to Desperado to Léon: The Professional, one of my very favourite films as it happens, and Tony Scott's 2004 thriller does little to hide how familiar it all is. Denzel Washington is the wounded ex-CIA man at the centre of it all; Dakota Fanning is the girl who slowly thaws him; and Mexico City is the powder keg they are living on top of.
The thing is, familiarity does not have to be a problem. Genre films run on templates. What matters is what a director and a cast do within those constraints, and there are stretches here where Scott and Washington do something genuinely exciting with the material. But we will get to that.
For me, this is very much a game of two halves, and the first half is the weaker one by some distance. The film spends a full hour or so patiently setting the board and building the bond between the two leads, and if I am candid, that opening stretch does it few favours. The protagonist is written as such a one-note slab of gruff, wounded machismo that a whole hour of watching him brood only underlines how thin that characterisation is. Brooding is not the same as depth, and no amount of slow-burn atmosphere quite disguises the fact that we are waiting a long time for something to actually happen. There is a good film trying to get out, but it is trapped behind a first act that mistakes moodiness for substance.
Then she is taken. And the film transforms utterly.
The second half, a raw, unflinching, and unspeakably cool crusade of revenge through the Mexico City underworld, is where Man on Fire truly roars to life. This is where Denzel Washington shines, because at last he gets to be that implacable force of nature and actually have it pay off on screen. There is something enormously satisfying about watching him work here. He has always had a quality where you believe completely that this person means exactly what they say, and in a revenge thriller, that is basically the whole game. I felt something similar watching him in Training Day (2001), where he commanded every frame he was in, and he brings that same kind of magnetic authority here, even if the material is not quite at that level.
The plot carrying him through it is nicely twisty as well. Convoluted enough to keep you genuinely guessing, but never so daft that it snaps your suspension of disbelief. Scott keeps things kinetic and disorienting in a way that suits the chaos of the situation, and when the film is operating at full tilt, it is a properly gripping piece of action cinema.
The tragedy of Man on Fire is that the blistering quality of its back half rather shows up how ordinary the front half is by comparison. If the whole film were as alive as its final hour, you would be looking at a real standout in the genre. Instead, you have to sit through a slow, one-dimensional first act to earn a terrific second one. Is it worth the wait? On balance, yes, though only just. There is enough here, particularly in Washington's performance and the relentless momentum of the revenge plot, to make it a worthwhile watch. But I would not pretend it is the film it could have been.
Three stars. Come for the second half, and be patient with the first.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2004 | Watched: 2026-08-31
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Disney Plus · Netflix Standard with Ads
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Google Play Movies · Sky Store
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Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
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