Jon Cloke

This film is brilliant on a number of levels. Besides giving Denzel Washington and Dakota Fanning the kind of roles they were made for, the jerky, grainy filming of the action parts against the personalized agonies of the individual characters is set against a brilliant and disturbing musical background which is also eclectic - the final song Una Palabra by Bruno Varela is ghostly and stark against the death of Creasy. There are few (if any) films in which each part (music, filming, characterization) are ever chosen with such almost casual brilliance - where Creasy steps into the swimming pool by the side of the motorway and the blood drifts away, for instance, followed by the death of La Voz at the end. All sins will be washed away, perhaps? I can see why this mixture of offsets and offshoots might worry traditional critics - this is truly a film of its' own kind which doesn't seem to care too much about the commercial applications of its distinct brilliances, but really, who cares? In a world of film with no soul, here is your soul. Man on Fire will grow and grow as a jerky, jangly work of art.