Man on Fire

Tony Scott’s 2004 film puts a burnt out former operative on bodyguard duty for a child in Mexico City. A. J. Quinnell’s 1980 novel had been filmed once already, by Élie Chouraqui in 1987 with Scott Glenn, and that version kept the book’s Italian setting. Scott chased the material for about twenty years; he told Denzel Washington it was the film he wanted to make right after The Hunger in 1983. Shooting covered Mexico City, Ciudad Juárez and Puebla, with interiors at Estudios Churubusco, seventy local actors and eleven thousand extras. Mexico City police chief Marcelo Ebrard consulted on it, hoping the film would draw attention to kidnapping. Scott called the city the third lead of the film and the subtitles the fourth. They are not a translation aid; they land on syllables, change size and sit inside the image as another layer. Cinematographer Paul Cameron shot some pieces at a hundred frames a second and others at six. A good fit if you want the subtitles treated as part of the frame, and do not mind the first half of the 146 minutes going to the bond between guard and child rather than the hunt. Not for anyone who wants the torture kept off screen; the second half shows both the questioning and the killing in plain view.