In short: Man on Fire (1987)

Having left the CIA with a fine cocktail of PTSD related problems, John Creasy (Scott Glenn) is doing the lighter kind of bodyguard and security work, where actual danger and additional trauma is highly unlikely to come his.

His best – probably only – buddy David (Joe Pesci) has gotten Creasy a job in Italy as the bodyguard of Sam Balletto (Jade Malle), the young daughter of wealthy parents who seem to spend less time with her than with their hairstylists. Creasy doesn’t really do children because his biggest hit when it comes to trauma concerns a dead kid. However, Sam’s nearly in as dire need of a friend – even if it’s a middle-aged big brother kind of friend – as he is, and soon enough he’s doing all the bonding and parenting stuff you’d expect her parents to bother with.

Alas, some people with inside information manage to kidnap Sam, leaving Creasy behind wounded and very angry. So angry he eventually goes on a bit of a rampage trying to find the kidnappers and bring Sam back home.

I’ve written up Tony Scott’s (who apparently was initially in talks for this version) later remake of Man on Fire with Denzel Washington some months ago. Not surprisingly, I disagree with the general critical consensus that declares the intolerable Scott version to be clearly superior. But then, in its own way, Élie Chouraqui’s version of the material is just as pretentious as that of Scott is, it’s just a kind of pretension I actually find enjoyable and aesthetically agreeable to me. When in doubt, I’ll prefer the film introduced with the hard-boiled monologue of a guy in a body bag.

I also simply do prefer the slow, gliding, “look, I’m an arty European movie from the 80s” thing to staccato camera waving and the colour of piss. The film at hand is also much, much shorter, which does help with its not exactly deep and complicated plot, though it actually shares some of the problems the later remake has with uniting its character-based first half and its slow action thriller moves in the second.

The production design is generally lovely, though, the often empty or illogically populated industrial and semi-industrial places much of the latter half takes place in taking on a rather dream-like quality in Chouraqui’s hands, turning the violence Creasy commits curiously dream-like itself. That does cost the film quite a bit of the dramatic tension you’d expect these scenes to have, but then, I don’t think dramatic tension was ever something the filmmakers here were interested in. It’s more one of those European movies using and abusing the visual motives of thrillers and a couple of actors with a very American presence to re-dream pulp as floaty, strange, yet deeply exotic and sexy thing.


Which, obviously, is only going to make a very specific part of this movie’s audience happy.