Film Illiterate, wherein the proprietor records movies seen, and sporadic progress through assorted lists of the "best". Originally started after regretfully renting something forgettable for the third time. I've forgotten what, but never again! A tedious endeavour since 2005. Hello. 🙂
Rapid cuts and jerky camera movements are business as usual in Hollywood action flicks, but Tony Scott outdoes himself with Man on Fire. Rapid cuts, jerky cameras, random speed-ups and slow-downs, tints, black and white, changes in film stock (!) -- one shot clear as day; the next, nearly identical, grainy as hell -- and more and more. There's incoherent fragmentation and then there's Man on Fire.
What makes it so offensive is that the best part of the film, not coincidentally, is the first half: a slow, character-driven piece about an alcoholic hit-man, Creasy (Denzel Washington), who takes a job as bodyguard for young Pita (Dakota Fanning). When she's kidnapped the pace, and the camera idiocy, pick up.
Oh, what am I saying! It's too cruel to pick on the visual style: the whole film turns bad, really, degenerating into gratuitous, sadistic violence and obvious plot twists, and without the Denzel/Dakota interplay loses all humanity. Christopher Walken is always good, but even he isn't enough to save it.