Man On Fire - "Denzel Gets Medieval"

“There is one kidnapping every 60 seconds in Latin America.  70% of the victims do not survive.”  And so begins Man on Fire.

Man on Fire is really two movies for the price of one.  The first hour is about a man named John Creasy, a former CIA agent, and Marine veteran of countless counterinsurgency and anti-terrorist actions.  Creasy is retired and in the midst of a crisis of conscience.  When he visits his former colleague Paul Rayburn in Mexico, he asks Rayburn if God will forgive them for all of the things they’ve done in their past life.   The second half of the movie is a classic revenge tale that is especially vicious.  That’s what got my attention - how violent the movie is.  It’s exceptionally violent, so my first reaction after I saw it was to rename it “Denzel Gets Medieval.”  Denzel’s character goes from one unfortunate goon to the next, killing them as he goes, but not before gathering important information that leads him on his trail toward finding the little girl he was charged with protecting.

Plot synopsis:  John Creasy [Denzel Washington] is an ex-CIA assassin.  He’s an alcoholic, depressed and suicidal.  He’s looking for something to do.  Paul Rayburn [Christopher Walken] is a friend of Creasy from the CIA.  He’s retired and has his own security firm in Mexico City.  He hires Creasy to come work for him.  His job?  To protect a nine-year old girl named Pita Ramos [Dakota Fanning].  Her parents [played by Marc Anthony and Radha Mitchell] hired him because of a rash of kidnappings in Mexico City.

Creasy is at the end of his proverbial rope.  Once while on a drunken binge he tried to kill himself, but the bullet misfired.  He takes that as a sign that it wasn’t his time to go yet.  At first Creasy is very stand-offish with Pita.  He says he was hired to protect her, not to be her friend.  But as time goes on, the two grow closer.  While Creasy was at Pita’s school watching her swim, he noticed she is a fast swimmer but a slow starter.  So he works with Pita on her starting technique.  During this time they become great friends.  Creasy would do anything to protect Pita.  He’s become more of a parent to her than her real parents.  But one day, Ramos told Pita that she should concentrate on the piano instead of swimming.  Creasy took Pita to piano practice.  While he waits for her, off-duty city cops in uniform and riding in a police car block off the street.  Creasy knows Pita’s kidnapping is on and starts a gunfight with the cops.  He kills two cops and two others, but he is seriously wounded himself.  After the kidnapping, the Ramoses agree to a $10 million dollar ransom from a guy called ‘The Voice.’  Ramos’ lawyer Jordan Kalfus arranges a ransom drop.  He puts the $10 million dollars in the trunk of a car to be parked somewhere The Voice’s minions could collect the money.  But before The Voice could get the money, his minions are ambushed and they don’t get the ransom.  The Voice calls Ramos and tells him Pita is dead because he didn’t get the money.

The Mexico City police are going to charge Creasy with the murder of the two cops.   Miguel Monzano [Giancarlo Giannini] and Mariana Garcia Guerrero [Rachel Ticotin] are present when the police chief holds a press conference saying he will charge Creasy with murder.  Monzano runs the Agency of Federal Investigation [AFI].  He knows the Mexico City police department is corrupt, so he aims to help Creasy.  He and Rayburn spirited Creasy out of the hospital so the Mexico City cops don’t kill Creasy for the murder of the two crooked cops.  Meanwhile Guerrero, who is a reporter for a newspaper called La Reforma, also tells Creasy she wants to help him. She provides much aid to Creasy with great effect.

Before he could heal completely, Creasy is up and about trying to find out who “kidnapped and “killed” Pita.  He asks Rayburn to provide him with lots of weapons to do what he needs to do.  Rayburn gives him what he wants.  Creasy went back to the Ramos’ house to pick up his things.  Pita’s mom finds him and asks him what he’s going to do.  He tells her he’s going to kill everyone who was involved, everyone who profited from Pita’s kidnapping.  She tells Creasy to “kill them all.”  Here is where “Denzel gets medieval.”

Medieval Moment #1 – Creasy asked the Guerrero to find the address of ten license plate numbers.  She got them from Manzano.  When he found the car he was looking for he waited for the owner to come out.  The owner did, and then Creasy got in the car with the guy and pointed a gun at him.  His name is Jorge Gonzalez.  He tells Creasy he’s a Judicial Policeman.  Creasy points the gun at his head and tells him to drive.  They end up at a hill overlooking one of Mexico City’s crowded slums.  After he knocks out Gonzalez he strips Gonzalez down to his underwear and he duct-tapes his hands to the steering wheel.  He tells Gonzalez he’s going to ask him some questions, and for every wrong answer, he’s going to cut off a finger.  Then he shows him the car’s cigarette lighter, which he explains will stop the bleeding after he takes a finger.  Gonzalez tells Creasy he’s “a member of La Hermanadad” [a group of crooked cops and gangsters], then Creasy cuts off the first finger.  And like he said, he used the lighter to cauterize the wound.  Creasy’s interrogation cost Gonzalez two fingers and [I think] a part of his right ear.  But Gonzalez told Creasy a few details – who ordered the kidnapping [The Voice], to whom they deliver their victims [‘the Guardians’], and about a guy named ‘the Butcher.’  ‘The Butcher’ works at a rave in Neza.  Creasy gives Gonzalez a cigarette and lights it up, then kills Gonzalez. 

Medieval Moment #2 –After dispensing with Gonzalez, Creasy goes to the rave in Neza.  There he finds the Butcher, hands him a wad of cash to get in the door.  After he enters, Creasy flashes him a picture of Pita and asked the Butcher what he knew about her.  The Butcher claims ignorance, upon which time Creasy puts a gun in his stomach.  So they take a little walk through the ravers and go upstairs to the office.  The Butcher knocks, a guy on the other side answers and opens the door after the Butcher said it was ok.  Creasy breaks in and fires one shot with a shotgun.  Creasy asks the three people present about the girl.  When they all claim ignorance Creasy shoots the Butcher and re-loads.  He duct-tapes the other two, then starts asking the guy who answered the door some questions.  The guy who answered the door told him about being contacted by cell phone and being paid with ATM cards. He knows that the Boss was yelling at Pita because his nephew got killed when the ransom money was stolen in the drop ambush.  He tells Creasy a crooked cop named Fuentes stole the ransom money.  Fuentes is a police lieutenant for the anti-kidnapping squad.  After that tidbit, Creasy kills the guy.  The only one who is left, an older lady, starts telling Creasy about the kidnappers knocking Pita around.  She recognized the voice of the Boss’s brother.  Creasy tells her if she can tell him where the Boss is he’ll let her live.  She says she doesn’t know, but she’ll give him “the girl.” When she shows Creasy “the girl,” it turns out this girl was a victim of a different kidnapping.    Creasy starts to open a bunch of gas canisters [of what I don’t know] and then sets the office on fire.  He leads the old lady and ‘the girl’ out of the rave, all the while firing shotgun blasts in the air to get the ravers to leave the building.  Shortly thereafter, the building explodes, causing all the ravers to cheer.  Creasy calls Guerrero and tells her about ‘the girl’ he just liberated.  After Guerrero shows up on the scene, Creasy asks Guerrero about banking connections.  He wants to know who the ATM cards are attached to.

Medieval Moment #3 – Creasy finds Fuentes, kidnaps him with the help of an RPG, takes him to an underpass and booby-traps him.  He took a bunch of C4, put a timer on it that’s activated by a pager, and shoved it up Fuentes’ ass.  He tells Fuentes what’s inside of him.  Then he starts to ask Fuentes some questions.  Fuentes tells Creasy he’s the “President of La Hermanadad.”  Unimpressed, Creasy informs Fuentes he doesn’t have a lot of time to talk [five minutes – he’d already sent a page to the bomb inside Fuentes], so Fuentes tells Creasy about the ransom drop, and how not all $10 million of the ransom was there.  Ramos' layer Jordan Kalfus loaded the bags of money in the car used for the ransom drop and kept most of the money for himself.  When time was up Creasy tells Fuentes that he wished he had more time, then walks away as Fuentes and his car blow up.

Creasy went to Kalfus' house to find him bled to death face down in his pool.  He finds a fax of bank codes from a bank in the Cayman Islands in the fax machine.  He calls Guerrero to find out about deposits and withdrawals for both Kalfus and Ramos.  Creasy went to the Ramos house to ask them about the money.  Lisa knows nothing.  Samuel confesses he arranged the kidnapping to get insurance money to pay off his debts.  He says he didn't inherit a business kingdom from his father - he inherited gambling debts that had to be paid.  Kalfus told Ramos that Pita would be back in 2 days - he lied.  Ramos killed Kalfus. "I did it for us - for the 3 of us."  Lisa tells Creasy to kill Ramos.  He doesn't.  What he does is take out the bullet that misfired when he tried to kill himself earlier.  He tells Ramos 'a bullet always tells the truth - it bullet never lies.  It didn't work for me - maybe it'll work for you."  So he hands Ramos the misfired bullet and a gun and walks away.  While he's walking away you hear Ramos killing himself.

Medieval Moment #4 – This is a brief medieval moment.  Guerrero had given Creasy an address for the ATM card he got at the rave.  Here he ran into The Voice’s brother.  After a brief shootout [during which Creasy was wounded], Creasy blew all the fingers off one of the brother’s hands.

AFI planted a camera in the house while they were pretending to go around the barrio giving 'cholera shots.'  They bugged the house and stole a picture of 'The Voice,' so now they know what he looks like.  Guerrero publishes his picture in La Reforma.  Creasy gets a copy of the picture and the address of Reina Rosas Sanchez from Guerrero.  Creasy goes to the address.  He finds the identity of The Voice - Daniel.  Creasy is wounded again [mortally this time].    Creasy makes contact with The Voice.  He tells The Voice he will kill his family if he doesn’t deliver himself to Creasy.  But The Voice has an ace-in-the-hole.  Pita is still alive and he tells Creasy.  Creasy wants “proof of life” and The Voice gives it to him – the name of Pita’s teddy bear [it’s ‘Creasy’].  Creasy and The Voice make a deal – Creasy and The Voice’s brother in exchange for Pita.  Creasy tells Lisa Ramos that Pita is still alive, tells her the location of the exchange, and that she should be there when it happens. 

Creasy and Pita meet halfway on an overpass.  Pita tells Creasy she loves him, and Creasy does likewise, but it’s time for him to go.  Pita is reunited with her mom.  Creasy gets in the car with The Voice's henchmen and dies from his wounds shortly thereafter.  AFI went to arrest The Voice on the same day, but The Voice was “killed during the arrest.” 

He knew he was going to die so he had no problem in giving himself up for Pita.  So perhaps not only is this a tale of revenge, it’s also a tale of redemption.  Creasy got the little girl back and killed a lot of bad guys along the way.  So maybe, just maybe because of this selfless act, God will forgive John Creasy of the sins of his past life.

Flight

When you watch commercials for the movie Flight, you see Denzel Washington flying an airliner upside down, trying to keep the airplane out of a steep dive a hoping to put the plane down with as little loss of life as possible. But [and there’s always a “but”] that’s just a small part of the story.  There’s a whole lot more to this movie than is suggested in the previews.

The story started in Orlando.  Denzel Washington got a 7:13 AM wake-up call.  He got the call, but the first person out of bed was a very attractive young lady wearing absolutely nothing.  Then Denzel got a phone call from his ex-wife.  The phone call didn’t go so well.  Denzel’s ex asks him for more money to pay for their kid’s school tuition.  They get in an argument.  Denzel hangs up.  Denzel took a drink from an almost empty beer bottle.  The young lady lit up a joint, which she shared with Denzel.  Then to top things off, Denzel did a couple of lines of cocaine to wake him up.  Did I mention Denzel had to go fly a plane in a couple of hours?  Denzel is Whip Whittaker, an airline pilot for an airline called SouthJet with a substance abuse problem.  He used to be a Navy pilot, and was reportedly a shit-hot pilot before he punched out of the Navy.

The day started off wet.  Whip did his walk around of the airplane, and then got on-board, where he was greeted by a flight attendant, who happens to be the young lady he was up all night with having sex, drinking and doing drugs.  Her name is Trina.  Her name pops up later in the story.  Margaret, the on-flight leader with whom Whit has flown many times before, also greeted him.  He made his way to the cockpit where he met his co-pilot [Ken] for the first time. Seeing Whit wearing sunglasses on such a crappy day didn’t fill Ken with very much confidence.   Whit assured Ken that he was ok to fly.  It was pouring down rain, the weather was generally crappy, but Atlanta gave them clearance to take off. 

Here’s where I call “bullshit.”  As one who flies to Atlanta a lot, I know first-hand that if there the slightest sign of rain, Atlanta halts air traffic, but I digress.  The flight took off, and  it was a very rough ride.  Whit suspended in-flight service.  He flew the plane between two storms and finally found a patch of smooth air.  Afterward, he addressed the passengers while he filled a big glass of orange juice with some small bottles of vodka. He went back to the cockpit to take a nap.  Shortly thereafter all hell broke loose.   The plane went into a steep dive, which jolted Whit from his slumber.  The only way Whit could think to stabilize the plane was to fly inverted.  He dumped fuel, stabilized the plane and rolled it back over to crash into a field.  Whit was knocked out by the crash, but he survived.

Whit woke up in the hospital.  The first person he saw was Charlie Anderson [Bruce Greenwood], a fellow pilot and now the pilot union’s representative to SouthJet.  He told Whit that most of the people survived the crash, but there were six fatalities.  Trina was one of them. After Charlie left Whit had another visitor.  This visitor is Harling Mays [John Goodman], his drug dealer.  Here is where the story goes into the classic five stages of dealing with substance abuse.

Denial.  Once he’s released from the hospital, Whit has Harling take him to his father’s farm rather than to his condo.  He wants to avoid the press, which is gathered around the condo.  Once he’s at the farm he goes through the house, finds every place he stashed bottles of booze, and empties every one of them.  I’m not sure if he thinks he can cure himself by getting rid of all his booze, or if he’s just getting rid of evidence.  While he was in the hospital he met a heroin addict named Nicole.  They both escaped their respective hospital rooms to go have a smoke in a nearby stairwell.  He saw her track marks.  They were joined by a cancer patient named Mark, who recognized Whit as “the hero pilot.”  He told her he wanted to see her again once he was released from the hospital.

Whit found Nicole’s place, right at the time she tried to skip out of paying rent.   She had nowhere to go so Whit said he could stay with her at the farm.  Nicole started to put her life together.  She got a job, went to AA meetings, and talked with her sponsor often.  She kept trying to get Whit to come to the meetings, too.   Whit finally went to one, but didn’t admit to being an alcoholic.  He left before the meeting ended.  It dawned on Nicole that by staying with Whit, her continuing sobriety was in jeopardy, so she got the hell out of there [the farm].

Anger.  Charlie Anderson tracked down Whit at the farm.  He asked Whit to have a meeting with him about the crash.  When Whit got to the meeting, he was greeted by Charlie and Hugh Lang [Don Cheadle], a lawyer from Chicago.  They informed Whit that his blood was drawn after the crash, and the results said he had elevated alcohol levels and cocaine in his system.   They said they would fight the findings, but they also told Whit that he could face jail time for manslaughter for the six people who died.  Whit didn’t take the news well and heads straight to the bar, where he orders a double vodka and orange juice. To compound things, he headed for a liquor store and stocked up on booze.

Bargaining.  At the funeral for Trina, he saw Margaret, who claimed she could tell that Whip was drunk when she first saw him that morning. Whip started to get personal, claiming that if not for him, she could have ended up dead as well.  Then he went to visit his co-pilot in the hospital.  Both Ken and his wife gave Whit the stink eye.  They informed Whit he’s got a broken pelvis, two broken legs and may never walk again.  They’re not happy with Whit.  Ken told Whit he hasn’t told the NTSB about his suspicions about Whip's condition at the time.  He told Ken the same story he told Margaret at the funeral.  Afterward, [off-camera] neither Margaret nor Ken told the NTSB their suspicions about Whit’s sobriety. 

Depression.  Whit is divorced, and neither his ex-wife nor his son want anything to do with him.  Is this the source of his drinking problem, or is his drinking problem the reason his family broke up?  He watched home movies of himself with his son and his now-deceased father, while getting hammered in the process.   I would think his inability to see his son would be depressing.  After Whit discovered the press found the farm, he turned around and headed for the neighborhood where his ex-wife and his son live.  They didn’t want him there and the ex called the cops.

More Denial.  When it came time for Whit to appear in front of the NTSB, he promised Charlie and Hugh he would stay sober.  He did that for thirteen days.  They took him to the hotel where he would meet the NTSB.  They posted a guard outside to insure he wouldn’t go anywhere.  They removed all the booze from the refrigerator.  But Whit couldn’t sleep.  He kept hearing some kind of bump in the night.  He discovered the door to the adjoining room was ajar, and made a bee line for the refrigerator, which is full of booze.  So he did what any self-denying drunk would do – he drank it all.  So the next morning when Charlie and Hugh Lang found him face down in the bathroom three sheets to the wind, they were desperate to get him together for the NTSB hearing that would take place forty-five minutes later.  Whit told them to call Harling Mays.  Harling showed up, laid out a couple of lines of cocaine, and Whit came around well enough to go to the hearing.

Acceptance.  The NTSB investigator lauded him for his flying skills.  She said that they got ten other pilots in a flight simulator to try to do what he did and they all failed.  She says the cause of the accident was a jackscrew in the elevator assembly, which made the plane go into the deep dive.  But after she praised Whip’s heroism, she questioned him about two empty vodka bottles.  The investigator knew Whit suspended the in-flight service, so the only people who would have access to the booze would be the flight attendants, pilot and co-pilot.  After she mentioned that the only person who tested positive for alcohol was Trina, Whit finally admitted he drank the vodka, and admitted that he was drunk when he flew that day, and that he was drunk at the hearing.  He ran out of lies and didn’t want to tarnish Trina’s memory.

Although he is in prison for at least five years, life is good for Whip.  He’s just finished telling his story to a bunch of other cons and is writing to Nicole, with whom he has stayed in contact.  Because he no longer feels the need to lie about his addictions, he says he’s “free.”  He’s told he has a visitor.  I thought the visitor would be Nicole, but instead it turns out to be his son.  His son tells him he has to write an essay for getting into college.  The subject – somebody I’ve never known.  Whip smiled and said “ok.”  He knew he wasn’t a father to his son because of his alcoholism, so he said “ok.”  And so the story ends… It was a somewhat happy ending.

The film could have been a depressing one, but it wasn’t.   Denzel Washington had me convinced he was on a downward spiral that wouldn’t end well for him.  This movie is just another reason he’s one of my favorite actors.