Going Home to Blue Bayou

ASK Recommends: Man on Fire (2004)

Man on Fire. Directed by Tony Scott, featuring Denzel Washington, Christopher Walken, Dakota Fanning, Giancarlo Giannini, Marc Antony, Radha Mitchell, Rachel Ticotin, and Mickey Rourke. 20th Century Fox, 2004.

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A man can be an artist in anything, food, whatever. It depends on how good he is at it. Creasy’s art is death. He’s about to paint his masterpiece. - Paul Rayburn (Christopher Walken)

Man on Fire is another one of those movies that amazes me every time I watch it, and I’ve watched it a number of times. I’m not certain of the count, but it must be upwards of twenty. Much like The Dark Knight, this is not a movie about perfection. Tony Scott does a bang-up job with this film, but he doesn’t try and hide flaws with cheap theatrics and political distractions. This is a film about love and loss. And also, about revenge.

I don’t fully comprehend what it is that Creasy feels when he receives the news of Pita’s death, but his transformation plays out powerfully on the screen. The movie is mired in death and destruction, so much so that the viewer begins to see Creasy as an agent of God’s wrath (even though such a title is self proclaimed).

Forgiveness is between them and God. It’s my job to arrange the meeting. - John Creasy (Denzel Washington)

Of course, while the violence of the film makes for a good action flick and gets people’s blood pumping as the people watching say, “those guys had it coming,” the violence of the film is not the point. Actually, for an action film, there’s an awful lot of story. And I believe that there is a reason for that, just as there is a reason that the movie is titled Man on Fire while the tagline for the film is “Revenge is a meal best served cold.” The contradiction, I think, is on purpose and it’s to highlight the true motive of the film.

Man on Fire is a story of redemption. We don’t end with the hero killing all the bad guys and riding off into the sunset on a white horse. He doesn’t get the girl. There’s no reward to speak of. And yet, there is. His reward is something tangible, Pita’s deliverance, but also something transcendent. His soul will find rest.

I’m goin’ home, too. I’m goin’ to Blue Bayou. - John Creasy (Denzel Washington)

As Creasy sends Pita running to her mother, and we watch him ride into the sunset in the backseat of a criminal’s car, we are invited to understand the true reward Creasy gets. Not only is he able to accomplish justice by reuniting Pita and her mother, but he is finally free from a life that has brought him suffering. Creasy’s melancholy question, “Do you think God will forgive us for what we’ve done?” comes back as Creasy departs to find out the answer. And the audience would do well to recall Pita’s earlier prayer, an earnest, heartfelt request that serves as a kind of deus ex machina for the film:

Dear God, I do not ask for health or wealth. People ask you so often that you can’t have any left. Give me, God, what else you have. Give me what no-one else asks for. Amen. - Lupita Ramos (Dakota Fanning)

Pita’s prayer is answered in Creasy, the man no one else asked for. And Creasy is likewise the recipient of God’s grace from such a simple prayer, as he grows to love the little child that no one else seemed to want, her parents particularly. Creasy is not a cold man blindly dealing out death and vengeance. Rather, he is a man on fire and alive in every way. The flame of his life lights the path for Pita, whose own flame had brightened his lonely existence. In the end, Creasy comes to understand the grace given him by extending it to those who least deserve it.