Cinema de Gym: 'Man on Fire'
Saturday, October 1, 2011 at 2:33PM 
Kurt here. Watching Man on Fire at my gym was a unique experience in that someone on staff, either by accident or sneaky design, played the DVD in Spanish. As I entered the cardio room, no one was bothering to fiddle with the settings, so neither did I. After all, here was an opportunity to better test my image-reading ability, or, at least, to better test Tony Scott's ability to tell a story with images. Enough time had passed since I'd first seen this Denzel Washington vengeance vehicle (released in 2004) for me to be unsure of where I stood in the running time, but given the room full of visibly exhausted investigators and hostage negotiators on screen, my guess was little Dakota Fanning had already been M.I.A. for quite some time. Daddy Marc Anthony, whose sweat-slicked cheekbones and jaw reflect the scene's pervasive blue highlights, is on the phone with who we're meant to assume is the culprit, while a pre-comeback Mickey Rourke, as a (probably) duplicitous agent or some such, is waiting to chew out the caller. Enter former next-big-thing Radha Mitchell, who, as Dakota's mother, steps in to take the phone, only to receive some devastating threat that leads to a Rene-Russo-in-Ransom freakout (in Espańol, no less).
Hombre en Fuego
From there, we hop to a bed-ridden Denzel, who looks like he's in Mexico but, then, that could just be Scott's burning-pińata aesthetic. Receiving what appears to be intel and some fiery pep talks from sidekick Christopher Walken, Denzel is back on his feet in no time, returning to the scene of the Dakota abduction (a park) and doing a lot of ACTORY things with his face while hunting for clues. This is a dialogue-free scene, but Scott does a lot of talking with the camera, spinning it incessantly to underscore clue confusion. I remember hearing somewhere (probably during some behind-the-scenes tidbit on the FX network) that Scott rigged the camera to a kids' merry-go-round to achieve this effect. I'm all for resourceful filmmaking, but looking again, this approach reads as literal and pushy, in a film already largely defined by maximum force. Satisfied (or so we assume from the answer-providing flashbacks), Denzel relocates to Dakota's parents' place, scouring the girl's bedroom for yet more clues, then encountering Radha. The mom cries about what I think I remember to be an overall fear of betrayal, which is likely justified by film's end. She hands Denzel a teddy bear, and then we cut to the CIA-operative-turned-bodyguard's badass weapons preparation process, an edit that speaks directly to the movie's intended juxtaposition of the sweet and the brutal.
I recall the sweet being far more effective, to the extent that I told many folks that Man on Fire was only worth watching in its first hour. Written by the busy Brian Helgeland, who adapted the novel that was also put to screen in 1987, the film takes memorable care in establishing a meaningful relationship between Denzel and Dakota, who slowly lowers his guard after he reluctantly agrees to serve as hers. It's moving and involving, and then the movie pivots with Dakota's kidnapping, slipping into a kill-'em-all ass-kicker whose primary goal seems to be appeasing the bloodthirsties in the audience. What we have then is a frantic, yet boring, tone, and grainy variations on Scott's repeated gimmick signature style of saturating the hell out of oranges, greens and blues. This, I believe, was the start of Scott's now-required look, not to mention the start of his maestro-muse relationship with Denzel (Déjà Vu, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 and Unstoppable would follow). It's one of those films that has bafflingly amassed a whole lot of devotees – the kind of movie guys love to say they love (in the ultimate seal of approval, it just popped up as one of Taylor Lautner's five faves). I'd love to say I love it, too, but, alas, no. I do wish I'd walked in during the first hour, if only to hear what the then-10-year-old Dakota sounded like dubbed over.
Conclusions?
1. If you're looking for a fun angle for your second reading of a film, play it in another language.
2. Sweetening things is no good if it becomes clear that you're more interested in bloodying things up.
3. While I greatly appreciate directorial trademarks, Tony Scott's might be my least favorite.
4. With a single kidnapping, Man on Fire has one more abduction than Taylor Lautner's Abduction.
Are you keen on Man on Fire, or, for that matter, Team Scott/Washington? Do you speak Spanish?
Reader Comments (3)
I do (speak Español).
Btw, to type ñ: ALT + 0241 (for Windows) though the n with a stress mark was really cute.
Experiencing watching a dubbed movie is something one should try at least once. It can be so funny if you don't speak the language. When it's the usual thing on tv, or in movies, it gives everything a dull sense of uniformity, from actors sharing the same dubbed voice to sound effects that almost disappear under the dubbed studio recorded sound.
As someone who lives in Mexico, I grew up watching dubbed cartoons, which my parents taught me to hate (they would never buy me a VHS tape at home that was not the original language with subtitles, so I had to wait until one of them went to the US to get a Disney movie, thank goodness for DVDs that have multiple language tracks). Watching a film dubbed can be a bit painful if you speaks the language, because they try to match the lips as closely as they can and the dialogue sounds very forced (and sometimes hopelessly melodramatic), although I did enjoy the Spanish dubbing of Shrek (mostly because they got Eugenio Derbez to dub the Donkey and he did a fantastic job). It can be fun if you don't know the language, but because I'm a huge fan of dialogue, I prefer to understand what they're saying. I did once go on a cruise where they had Moulin Rouge! playing on the television in a different language every day and since I already knew it by heart, it was a great way to try and learn a little Italian, French and German.
As for Man on Fire, yes, I also prefer the first hour to the second. It does feel like two different, disjointed movies and I prefer the first of the two (which Denzel and Dakota totally nail).