Man on Fire movie review: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II makes friends and tortures enemies in Netflix’s uninspired revenge thriller

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It is difficult for men of a certain age to make new friends.

Don’t believe me? Ask HBO DTF St. Louiswhere the search for the simpatico Bro very quickly comes to include murder, infidelity, and Jamba Juice. It’s a very long way for the characters played by Jason Bateman and David Harbor just to find a colleague willing to go on recumbent bike rides or share exercise tips, but the result is one of the best TV shows of the spring.

On Netflix Man on fireSpecial Forces-trained mercenary John Cressey (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) finds an unconventional excuse to assemble a group of friends for a montage of cooking, long walks on a Brazilian beach, and personal redemption: extrajudicial revenge.

In this seven-episode semi-adaptation of A.G. Quinnell’s novel, John Creasy learns that the best revenge really is the friends we’ve made along the way.

This is sure to be confusing to fans of the 1980 book or two earlier versions, in which Scott Glenn and Denzel Washington played the highly trained and unrepentantly brutal Chrissy. At the core of the story is the certainty that revenge, while sometimes satisfying on the gut level, is corrosive to the soul and is not, in fact, a reliable way to meet lifelong friends.

Perhaps previous Transformers were simply more inward-looking and less franchise-oriented than Kyle Killen, creator and writer of the Netflix series. There is little to this Man on fire This will speak to a small subset of viewers who loved Killen’s short-lived film The only star and Awakebut there’s plenty more that might appeal to a much broader group of viewers who loved similar shows Night agent And two-thirds of recent dramas are on Amazon.

this Man on fire It is not designed to be a complex, brutal, nihilistic portrait of vigilantism and violence. It’s a strangely upbeat, and disappointingly underwhelming story for an ongoing series about a damaged mercenary and his unlikely gang, the Scooby Gang. It was accepted on these limited, ambitious and rarely convincing terms, but with little else, it worked.

We’re introduced to Abdul-Mateen’s Chrissy at the end of an operation in Mexico City to do… I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. He’s running an operation with a small group of fellow mercenaries, men with whom he’s clearly close, even if the five-minute opening isn’t enough time to get into the kind of friends these guys are — let alone the kind of man Cressie is or was before the operation went pear-shaped and all of Cressie’s men were killed.

Four years later, Chrissy is haunted. In a useful montage – Man on fire Filled with easy montages – we see that Chrissie’s life is a constant routine of nightmare-filled sleeping, daytime drinking, and carelessly working a warehouse job. Imagining this forever, Chrissy disables his car’s brake system and crashes into a concrete pylon.

When Chrissie wakes up, he’s in a hospital bed with his mentor, friend, and long-time colleague Paul Rayburn (Bobby Cannavale) by his side. Rayburn says he needs a man like Chrissie – an alcoholic? Suicidal? Do you suffer from debilitating PTSD? – To join him in Brazil, where he is in charge of security on the eve of elections that are suffering from escalating terrorist threats.

So off we go to Rio, accompanied by what Netflix’s translation calls “meditative Brazilian conga music” (because John Cressy isn’t ready for playful samba music). Everyone, including the President’s strict security chief (Tomas Aquino), questions Chrissy’s readiness for the job, but Paul welcomes Chrissy to multiple dinners with his family, including his sullen teenage daughter Beau (Billie Bullitt).

It doesn’t take long for something bad to happen and Chrissy is set on a path of revenge, reluctantly accompanied by Bo and an assortment of supporting Brazilian characters, including ride-sharing driver Milo (Alice Braga); her sensitive cousin from the slums, Levro (Jefferson Baptista); bullying mid-level gang member Vico (Iago Xavier); And from the United States, Henry Tappan (Scott McNairy), a CIA official who was previously involved with Creasy and Paul. They are all immersed in a multi-layered conspiracy, but in reality they recognize each other and carry out elaborate robberies and infiltrations in the name of revenge. As you do.

Netflix Man on fire It is neither an exact adaptation of the book/movies nor a sequel or prequel. It is best described as “something that carries the same sentiment as the previous properties.” There’s the damaged Chrissie, who puzzlingly loses consciousness at inopportune moments due to the trauma he’s endured; International setting (Italy in the book and first film, Mexico City in the 2004 film); And a young woman breaks through his defenses and teaches him to feel again. But the actual plot and nature of the revenge are new — or “new,” because it would be foolish to think of anything Man on fire fresh.

Man on fireoriginally ordered as eight episodes and feeling overlong and rushed by seven, becomes a series of deft but forgettable set pieces orchestrated by the directors – The second doctrine Director Steve Caple Jr. directs the film. The first two episodes deal with one abandoned warehouse after another, eventually giving way to a home break-in, a prison break, and more, without ever becoming anything special. The series is filmed in Mexico and Brazil, but this often means “We got a drone shot of the favelas!” Or “Don’t forget that Rio has beautiful beaches!” Too many modern thrillers have made better use of South and Central American locations for me to list them all; As is the case with recent thrillers that have meaningful things to say about the South and Central American setting beyond “sometimes Americans meddle in international politics.”

There are a few fight scenes, where Abdul-Mateen masters a style that looks “rusty but lethal”, as well as a lot of torture that might leave you feeling frustrated if you’re squeamish about such things. But nothing lingers. When I thought back to the scenes in which Chrissy beat up an assortment of Brazilian civilians tied to chairs and such, I tried to remember anything specific that came out of them (not that Man on fire is to make any sort of ethical point about enhanced interrogation). Sometimes the torture is great, like walking away from an exploding building in slow motion, something Chrissie does without irony. Just as it sounds adorable when Chrissy sets the bad guys on fire and quips, “Who’s the guy setting the fire now, Sparky?” (To clarify, he does the former, but does not say the latter.)

It’s just that Creasy doesn’t offer much. Killen’s Season 1 build doesn’t allow the character to show any reasonable prowess or experience. Every now and then he says, “Yes, I sewed an explosive device into your chest and I have a detonation device,” and you’re supposed to be like, “Sure I did, John Creasy,” instead of wondering why he hasn’t given us any indication of how he did it or what talents he has. Abdul-Mateen’s performance is consistently bleak, but never manic enough, downplaying the stakes throughout.

That’s something you’ll have to sacrifice if you want to make it believable that a motley crew of Brazilian randos will form around Chrissy. Man on fire It doesn’t really do that either. Team assembly is arbitrary, as are their skill sets. They are available and willing to help.

As much as I appreciate that there was no attempt to insert a romantic subplot into Braga’s Melo story, it’s just a convenient way for Chrissy to meet other Brazilians, present but completely lacking in personality. to Unfortunately, Boulet’s Poe is even worse, the latest in a seemingly endless line of privileged cable teens who exist only to be placed in inappropriate danger. It’s not worse than the Kim Power/Dana Brody archetype, but no one has ever tried to say that Kim Power or Dana Brody are the pioneers of 24 or Homelandwhile Poe is the second biggest role in Man on fire However it adds almost nothing. I don’t even think Tony Scott’s film is very good, but it’s a shame Dakota Fanning doesn’t give a performance that makes you understand how this little girl can help John Cressy temporarily feel human again.

Both McNairy and Cannavale give the impression that they’re showing up on set playing Scoot McNairy and Bobby Cannavale, which isn’t a bad thing because both actors always nail whatever joint they’re in. But they could have swapped roles without changing the role or the overall quality of the series. They’re not inherently replaceable actors, but neither is written well enough to make either of them break a sweat.

My two favorite performances come from Baptista and Xavier, two young actors I’ve never seen before, and the only characters who are completely unpredictable.

It doesn’t seem like a spoiler to say that Man on fire It’s setting itself up for future seasons, but it’s hard to know which parts of the Creasy crew will return.

I just hope he remembers this valuable lesson: revenge is a dish best served with an accompanying caipirinha and a table full of friends.