In Mexico City a wave of kidnappings is throwing the city into turmoil. Everyone who's anyone now has a bodyguard and the radical press suspects the authorities are turning a blind eye, or worse.

Into this melting pot comes John Creasy (Denzil Washington), a washed-up ex-CIA operative tired of dealing death for the American Government. With a drink problem and a wavering faith, Creasy needs a new start. Through ex-CIA pal Rayburn (Christopher Walken), Creasy gets a job with a wealthy family in Mexico City as protector to their nine year old daughter Pita (Dakota Fanning). Anti-social, beset by his demons, Creasy finds himself reluctantly warming to his precocious new charge. Soon they're friends and Creasy begins to find meaning all over again. Suddenly the girl is kidnapped and with the help of investigative reporter Rachel Ticotin ( Falling Down ), Creasy rains vengeance on anyone who's had a hand in it.

Man on Fire, the latest film from Brit-director Tony Scott (Enemy of the State, Top Gun) feels like two movies stitched together. For the first half, it's a multi-layered, engaging drama, with some genuinely affecting scenes between Creasy and Pita. Then it becomes an all-out, bloody revenge thriller, with Creasy torturing and executing his way to the truth. But it's a change of pace from which the movie struggles to recover and is marked by the introduction of a shed-load of flashy sounds and visuals. If revenge is a dish best served cold, in Man on Fire it's also served up on a flame-grilled Mexican platter.

Denzil Washington, working with Scott nine years after Crimson Tide, is as watchable as ever and gives the uneven material all he's got. Yet the performance that sticks in the mind is that of ten-year old Dakota Fanning. Her amazingly well-rounded portrayal of the young girl, Pita, gives the film - as well as Creasy - an emotional and spiritual core. If Scott had trusted more to his actors and to his story and less to the distracting visual trickery, this would be a lot better than the efficient and uneasy film it is.

Yet Scott's revenge thriller is certainly more thoughtful than most, even if Brian Helgeland's script can't help going for the glib ("forgiveness is between them and God; my job is to set up the meeting") or the bland. For all it's violence, Man on Fire has a depth and humanity missing from, say, Helgeland's own writer-director revenge film Payback. Scott weaves in religious, political and philosophical themes that are not quite buried in the welter of violence. For a moment or two Scott's movie even seems to be raising a disturbing point - maybe we rely on the 'just violence' of soldiers like Creasy to protect our cosy ways of life from terror? It's a timely and controversial question and Man on Fire raises itself out of the routine by posing it.

Glenn Watson, 09.10.04