Review of Man on Fire (2004) by Dawdlingpoet — 20 Nov 2021

The first fifty minutes or so of the movie is quite slow and is all about John's relationship with Pita, which could be seen as boring to some, if your only after the large special effects and action scenes but I think it is worth it to properly set the scene for whats to come, for the characterisation/development and to make you really root for John as he sets out to discover who was behind what happened. You can tell that John tried to keep a distance from Pita as not to get attached to her personally or to lose focus on his job to keep her safe and secure but it turns out that they form quite a bond as friends, with Pita often asking John about himself. Once the action starts, its quite suspenseful and there are some pretty impressive special effects, mainly explosion scenes as well as some brief black and white flashback scenes. It does become quite fast paced and the story isn't sacrificed for the action either, the plot thickens as John discovers more about the underground organisation behind many of Mexicos kindappings and there are some real twists in the plot, to keep the viewer guessing.

The performances are all good, Dakota Fanning in particular, playing a very clued up little girl. The story is quite believable and gritty and although it is quite long at over two hours and ten minutes, it had enough suspense and action to keep me watching, indeed I found it quite absorbing, in such a way as that I was glued to the screen and I didn't feel that it was too unrealistic, that there was too much 'violence for violence sake' (as there is a fair bit of violence but it didn't seem overly excessive, given the plot).

I thought that it was, at times, quite an emotional movie, in that you do care for, or about, the main characters. The lighting used at times (dark and grainy) gives a gritty feel that I thought worked quite well too.

About the only downside (other than the slow start which might bore some impatient people perhaps) is that the ending may be seen as a bit too 'Hollywood' by some but I'll say no more about that, so I don't give too much away. Oh and also there are alot of Spanish subtitles too, so be aware of that too, if reading many subtitles in a movie really puts you off then this may not be for you, although thats not to say that there isn't English dialogue but the movie is set in Mexico... there is more English spoken than Spanish but there were still quite alot of subtitles. The subtitles themselves were shown on screen in a dynamic way with the words swooping onto the screen sometimes, rather than just appearing statically, at times.