“Johnny Be Good.” (“Go-Creasy,” perhaps, becoming “Go, Johnny, Go”?) Lloyd Sacks
sums the movie, at its best, a sort of “fever dream.”
In this version, as in the book, Creasy’s demise is portrayed as a ruse, but the
girl, called “Sam” and played by Louis Malle’s daughter Jade, is found by Creasy and
lives. Dark, brooding (some scenes so dark they are difficult to watch on older video
screens not adept at separating blacks and browns), the film seems more naturalistic
than realistic, Creasy’s pilgrimage through the underworld watched over by enormous,
sinister forces beyond his immediate comprehension. During some scenes, the
shadows are so strong, one almost forgets the film has been shot in color. Most
importantly, the film seems more about Creasy’s ordeal than the actual revenge taken
en route. Glenn’s Creasy simply assumes the world cannot be fixed, and his is a fever
dream: he speaks as a dead man, overcome by this world’s sickness. But he saves the
girl. His reward—and the audience’s—is seeing her alive.
The 2004 rendition of the tale, Washington’s star piece, moves the story to
Mexico and was received by critics more favorably, though again with tempered
enthusiasm for what revengers do. Roger Ebert’s qualified summary nicely captures the
critical mood: “Tony Scott’s ‘Man on Fire’ employs superb craftsmanship and a powerful
[. . .] Washington performance in an attempt to elevate genre material above its natural
level, but it fails. The underlying story isn’t worth the effort.” Viewers identify with the
characters, Ebert admits, but are exhausted, as it were, by the extended celebration of
action and violence, even as they are off-put by the film’s, in effect, double ending. In
this version, the father collaborates with the kidnappers, trying to extort funds and cover
his tracks using the crime as guise, and in the end, the father must die even as Creasy
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