2004 Movie Titles
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2004 Movie Titles
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Man on Fire
Starring: Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, Giancarlo Giannini, Marc Anthony, Rachel Ticotin and Mickey Rourke
Directed by: Tony Scott
Screenplay by: Brian Helgeland
Release Date: April 23rd, 2004
Running Time: 102 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence / terror, sexual content and language.
Box Office: $77,911,774 (US total)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
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A wave of kidnappings has swept through Mexico, feeding a growing sense of panic among its wealthier citizens, especially parents. In one six-day period, there were 24 abductions, leading many to hire bodyguards for their children.
Into this world enters John Creasy (Denzel Washington), a burned-out ex-CIA operative/assassin who has given up on life. Creasy’s friend Rayburn (Christopher Walken) brings him to Mexico City to be a bodyguard to nine-year-old Pita Ramos (Dakota Fanning), daughter of industrialist Samuel Ramos (Marc Anthony) and his wife Lisa (Radha Mitchell). Creasy is not interested in being a bodyguard, especially to a youngster, but for lack of something better to do, he accepts the assignment.
Creasy barely tolerates the precocious child and her pestering questions about him and his life. But slowly, she chips away at his seemingly impenetrable exterior, his defenses drop, and he opens up to her. Creasy’s new-found purpose in life is shattered when Pita is kidnapped. Despite being mortally wounded during the kidnapping, Creasy is “a Man on Fire,” as he vows to kill anyone involved in or profiting from the kidnapping. And no one can stop him.
The start of production in Mexico City for Man on Fire marked the culmination of a 20-year odyssey by director Tony Scott and Regency Enterprises to bring the project to the screen.
About The Production
Regency owner and founder Arnon Milchan purchased motion picture rights to the 1980 novel Man on Fire by A.J. Quinnell (a pseudonym – to this day, the author’s name remains unknown to the public). The story’s protagonist, CIA counter-terrorist John Creasy, appeared in three subsequent Quinnell thrillers: The Perfect Kill, The Blue Ring and Message from Hell.
Milchan recognized the book’s cinematic potential and approached director Tony Scott, who had just helmed The Hunger, to develop a film based on the novel. “The story is a huge emotional roller-coaster ride,” says Scott. “It’s about a guy who has lost his way and is reborn by guarding a nine-year-old-girl. When she is kidnapped, he goes after those responsible and works his way through the kidnapping chain of command, and he is unforgiving in his pursuit.”
Despite his enthusiasm for the project, Scott fell out and moved on to direct Top Gun. Nevertheless, in two decades that followed, Scott’s interest in Man on Fire continued unabated. “The project stayed with me all this time,” he says. “I never really lost sight of it.”
Years later, producer Lucas Foster joined forces with Regency to develop another adaptation of Man on Fire, and two-time Oscar-nominated screenwriter Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential, Mystic River) penned a new screenplay. In 2003, Tony Scott, with whom Foster collaborated on Crimson Tide, signed in to direct, nearly two decades after he had first encountered the project. Helgeland’s initial screenplay drafts, like the novel, were set in Italy. But Foster and Scott, realizing that that locale and its Mafia antagonists were tired – and that kidnappings had virtually been eliminated in Italy thanks to tough new laws – had locations scouted in Brazil, Guatemala and Mexico.
The filmmakers’ voluminous research revealed that kidnapping has now become a way of life in Mexico City. “Kidnapping is a huge business there,” says Scott, “very controlled and organized. It’s an actual industry.” Scott researched case histories of kidnappings in Mexico and screenwriter Brian Helgeland re-engineered the story accordingly. “The research was invaluable in bringing a verisimilitude to the story,” says Scott. “Even if the audience doesn’t know the procedures and worlds we detail in the film, I think it will feel real to them.”
Scott says Helgeland’s contributions to the project were invaluable. “What Brian did so well was create two stories,” says the director. “The first story, or first half of the film, is about a guy finding his way back into life through this child; the second story is his quest for revenge.”
Helgeland likens Man on Fire to “Beauty and the Beast.” “Pita knows there’s a heart beating away inside of Creasy, even if he doesn’t know it’s there,” he says. “When the thing that brings him back to life is taken away, he becomes enraged because now his heart’s beating again.”
Taking on the role of the “Man on Fire” is two-time Academy Award winner Denzel Washington, who previously worked with Tony Scott on the thriller Crimson Tide. Scott recognized certain qualities in the actor that would serve him well as Creasy. “I love Denzel’s obsessive quality and his internal darkness,” says the director. “There’s a hardness to Denzel that’s really interesting. He knows how to draw it out and use it effectively. Denzel really brings across how Creasy closes himself off as a defense mechanism against the world. So when his heart does begin to thaw, it’s all the more moving.”
“Creasy has lost himself in alcohol, lost his purpose and life, and couldn’t cope with what he had done as a government operative/assassin and what he is good at,” says Washington. “He is detached, and that’s what happens when you kill people for a living. Creasy is a lost soul who no longer has the ability to love, and through this little girl, he finds himself and reconnects with his soul and life.”
Indeed, despite his initial resistance to Pita, Creasy cannot resist the youngster, who is bubbling over with life and spirit. “She’s just exploding with possibility, emotion and curiosity – all the things Creasy has rejected and denied himself,” says Washington.
Tony Scott and producer Lucas Foster cast Dakota Fanning as Pita after they saw her work opposite Sean Penn in the drama I Am Sam. Their pursuit of and faith in the young actress was more than rewarded. “Dakota is among the most talented actresses I’ve ever worked with, and she’s only nine!” says Foster. “She’s like the sun – a burst of energy.” Adds Scott, “Dakota is uncanny – she’s nine going on 19. She has an instinctual understanding of human nature. We’d be watching Denzel improvise or pull and push scenes in different ways, and she was always able to go with the flow.”
Fanning describes Pita as a girl who “loves life and loves to swim.” In fact, the character’s aquatic abilities play a major role in bringing her and Creasy together when the hardened bodyguard reluctantly agrees to coach her in a swimming competition. While Washington trained to move and think like a bodyguard under technical advisor and executive protection expert Don Rosche, Fanning worked for months on her swimming, Spanish lessons (Pita, with a Mexican father and American mother, is bi-lingual), and piano lessons. She also spent considerable off-screen time with her on-screen parents, Marc Anthony and Radha Mitchell, to help them bond as a family.
Bringing Creasy together with Pita and her family is Rayburn, an old friend of Creasy’s who has found success south of the border. At first, Scott had Oscar winner Christopher Walken in mind to play corrupt lawyer Jordan Kalfus (a role eventually taken by Mickey Rourke). “But I told Tony that I was fed up with playing bad guys,” says Walken, with a laugh. “I wanted to play the good guy!” Scott was more than happy to oblige and gave Walken the part of Rayburn. “Chris can read the phone book and make it interesting and funny. He brings a lot of dynamic shadings to Rayburn.”
Australian-born Radha Mitchell portrays Pita’s mother, Lisa Ramos, the American “trophy wife” of a young Mexican industrialist. Lisa, like Creasy, goes through a complex and unexpected character arc, which Mitchell enjoyed bringing to life. “Initially, Lisa is at a point of confusion, but as the story progresses she clarifies what she wants out of life and what’s really important to her,” says Mitchell. “She gets broken down by what happens, and she is rebuilt in a new way”
Lisa Ramos’ husband, Samuel, is a member of the Mexican aristocracy who fears losing his lifestyle and family due to a burdensome debt – leading him to take extreme measures that have dire consequences. “Samuel feels a lot a lot of tension because he doesn’t have the money he once had, and his wife loves to spend money,” says music superstar and actor Marc Anthony, who takes on the role. “He adores his daughter but cannot spend as much time with her as he’d like to, due to frequent business travels.”
Anthony, who has appeared in seven feature films, says Man on Fire is his most challenging film role to date. “I even found myself trembling at times working with Tony Scott and Denzel Washington – they’re such formidable talents,” he says.
Famed Italian actor Giancarlo Giannini portrays Manzano, whom the actor calls “an honest cop surrounded by corruption.” Manzano uses Creasy – even as Creasy uses him – to fight Mexico City’s wave of kidnappings. Scott and Helgeland created the character to have someone to support Creasy’s relentless pursuit of the kidnappers – to get Creasy information he wouldn’t otherwise have access to, and to have him do what Manzano cannot do himself: find and stop the vicious kidnapping cells.
Manzano and another character, newspaper editor Mariana, played by Rachel Ticotin, represent a positive vision of Mexico and provide a stark contrast to the kidnappers’ dark world of corruption and crime. “Man on Fire depicts the two halves of Mexico,” says producer Lucas Foster. “The half that’s rampant with corruption and poverty, and the other half made up of the people who are trying to clean up crime and, especially kidnappings.”
Rachel Ticotin’s Mariana, looking to expose the truth behind the kidnappings, helps Creasy make his way through the kidnappers’ sophisticated organization. “She’s manipulating him into doing what no one else can,” says Ticotin. “So it’s a weird relationship – they’re using each other.”
“Creasy doesn’t know who organized the kidnapping of Pita,” says Denzel Washington. “So he has to rely on Mariana and Manzano. They can’t get the top guy, but Creasy can because of his special training and the fact that he’s not encumbered by the Mexican bureaucracy.”
Given Tony Scott’s extensive research into Mexico and the social and political conditions that led to its ranking as third in the world in kidnappings, it’s not surprising that the country itself, as well as its capital, Mexico City, play important roles in Man on Fire. Scott captures Mexico City’s pollution, traffic and the cacophony that bombard its citizens. “I wanted to make the city a major character,” says Scott. “It has a rich cultural history and is full of visual contrasts and architectural richness. It is sensual and beautiful and, at the same time, it’s dark and dangerous.”
To give Man on Fire a taught, claustrophobic, and reality-based feel, the production filmed mostly on location throughout Mexico City. Shooting in the oldest, largest and most traffic-congested city in North America was a constant challenge. More than 50 vehicles moving cast, crew and equipment had to negotiate the city’s narrow and crowded streets, spending hours making their way through grinding traffic. In addition, general strikes were an almost daily fact of life, and the filmmakers had to wade through Mexico City’s labyrinthine bureaucracy of 17 mini-states, each with its own municipality and governor. “But it was all worth it,” says Foster, “because audiences will see a contemporary Mexico of extremes, brimming with light, color and extraordinary people.”
“Extremes” might also describe Tony Scott’s and director of photography Paul Cameron’s use of light, color, exposures, and film processes to reflect Creasy’s emotional and psychological upheaval during and after the kidnapping. “I like experimenting with different cinematic methods to identify emotions,” says Scott who, like Cameron, cut his filmmaking teeth in the often-non-traditional world of making commercials. “The kidnapping scene seemed a good point to try to identify the internal workings of Creasy’s mind through cinematic technique.”
To achieve an often startling photographic style, Scott and Cameron hand-cranked the camera to slow down or speed up movement (a technique dating back to the silent film era), used reversal film stock to make the colors more vivid, created multiple exposures by imprinting three sets of images on the same plate of film, and used Panavision XL cameras and even 16mm cameras for maximum maneuverability. To add even greater visual impact to specific sequences, Scott and Cameron employed multiple cameras, which often proved a formidable challenge to the cinematographer. “Multiple cameras are insane!” Cameron remembers. “We had to keep them all on a specific axis of light, which is really tricky. But among the many advantages of using multiple cameras is that you’re getting the performances precisely as they happen.”
Denzel Washington continues to be awed by Scott’s directorial skills – and his penchant for multiple cameras. “Yeah, we called him ‘Nine-Camera Tony’,” jokes the actor. “I didn’t know what the heck he was doing with all those cameras [in reality, Scott used “only” four], but it’s inspiring because he paints beautiful canvasses with them.” Adds Washington, who made his directorial debut with Antwone Fisher in 2002: “It was a real education for me as a new filmmaker.”
However formidable Man on Fire’s look and occasional non-linear editing style, Scott is quick to point out that the technique is there to serve the story, its characters and its emotions. “The film is an emotional journey,” says Scott. “It’s about rebirth and second chances, and the lengths one man will go to when those very things are taken away from him.”
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Denzel Washington is a "Man on Fire" who relentlessly pursues a kidnapping ring in Man on Fire.
