![]() ![]() Now, admittedly, a lot of viewers might see a few potential Lolita moments, but I'd make the assertion that if you are a parent, especially of a preteenager, then you see less wrong with Creasy and Sam's close relationship. They both share an interest in Vikings, really. ![]() Man on Fire is the exception to the rule in this, over the course of the first 45 minutes of the film we get to know Creasy and Sam so well that we feel like we actually know them as real flesh and blood people. ![]() This is true in real life also, of course, opening the newspaper and reading horror stories about people far away is not the same as getting a phone call about your dead friend. Especially when later in the film those characters are put into danger or even die, it's extremely difficult for the audience to really empathize with people we never really knew. So many movies, of all budgets and eras, utterly fail to give us a reason to care about the main characters. The first half of our movie is all about building up character development. Perhaps it was the change in setting from Northern Italy to Mexico, or maybe it was that Mister Sexiest Man Alive Denzel just didn't look convincing as a burnt-out former contract killer, or maybe it was that the last half relied more on explosions and cordite fumes than any meaningful dialogue or emotion, but I strongly prefer the 1987 version in almost every way.įanning's going to win her own Oscars eventually, we all know that. While a competent big-budget actioneer, the remake had little of the original's grittiness and realism. Of course, Man on Fire was remade in 2004, with Denzel Washington and Dakota Fanning in the Creasy and Sam roles. Their budding relationship is what drives the first half of the movie, as Sam slowly pulls Creasy out of his shell and in the process finds what she needs herself. She sees Creasy, despite his initial gruffness and one-word answers, as a potential father-figure, or at least a friend (she's so isolated up at their lake house that she doesn't have any friends). ![]() The family has a precocious, freckle-faced 12-year old daughter named Sam who is pretty much ignored by her always-traveling parents and desperate for some sort of stable adult attention. In Italy in the mid 1980s rich people lived with the constant threat of the Mafia taking notice of their money and doing something nasty to get some or all of it, so if you could afford a bodyguard (or plural), you had one. His new job is being a live-in bodyguard for a rich Italian family up in the Milan/Lake Como area. īut being an old retired CIA spook doesn't exactly pay the electric bill, so Creasy has to find work in a field where he can use his unique skills. He's sullen, reserved, and haunted by memories of very bad things happening in hellholes like Beirut and Malaysia, all of which keep him from opening his heart up to anyone out of learned self-preservation. As such, this won't be one of my usual drunkenly sarcastic reviews, but it is pretty unknown and I do enjoy bringing you, my five loyal readers, some of the more obscure films to be found.įirst let's meet our hero, John Creasy, a former CIA operative and mercenary, now a middle-aged semi-retired burn-out with John Lennon glasses and shaggy hair. So good, in fact, that I debated whether or not to even review it, as it's really not "MMT-worthy" in the sense that there's not much about it to point and giggle at. While most of its brethren are cheesy eye-rollers, Man on Fire is surprisingly good, despite what those Philistine IMDb commenters say (who generally fall into two camps, those that only watch French art house films and those that believe that all movies should be judged against The Dark Knight and Serenity). Today I'll be reviewing a gritty, tense, but nearly forgotten Italian action movie from the mid 80s. ![]()
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