I’m doing some software work and watching Man on Fire. For some reason I am watching the edited version on tv even though I have the dvd unopened in my credenza.
Almost any Denzel movie is great Sunday entertainment with the exception of Training Day. Denzel won an Oscar for Training Day even though it is far inferior to his body of work. Â It was most likely a make up Oscar for The Hurricane. Anytime someone receives a make up award for their body of work the award givers are “pulling a Denzel”.
Anyway, back to the movie. One of the things that I love about Denzel is there is always a part of every movie he is in where he repeats something someone says and elaborates in a very menacing way. In Man on Fire, he says “You’re from Jersey. I’m from Jersey,” and the guy nearly faints. This is a skill I would love to have. I’m not sure what to call it since “pulling a Denzel” is already taken, but watch any of his movies… they all have it. Tom Cruise has a variation (let’s call it “the Tom Cruise variation”), but he will have to wait until I watch a Tom Cruise movie.
At the end of the movie, I could have sworn that the death music from Gladiator was playing. J and I put in the Gladiator dvd and switched back and forth. The best we could figure is that Man on Fire has some sort of remix of a portion of M’s death music.
Rotten tomatoes rating: 39% (that’s too low, the movie is good)