GREAT BALLS...

REVIEWED - MAN ON FIRE: Denzel Washington is out for blood in Man on Fire, a startlingly vicious and empty-headed thriller, writes Donald Clarke

In A futile attempt to stop Denzel Washington shoving explosives up their bums (no, really), the villains in this absurdly lengthy revenge drama repeatedly tell the hero that whenever they did what it was they did, they were just being "professional". "I'm hearing that a lot recently," Denzel says as he oils up another Semtex suppository.

Will Tony Scott, director of such grim atrocities as The Hunger and Days of Thunder, offer a similar defence when he gets to meet the Almighty? "I was just following orders, God." Perhaps he will. Then again, I have a funny feeling that, like the poor, Tony may be with us forever.

To damn with praise so faint it may be entirely inaudible, Man on Fire, which comes from a script by the erratic Brian Helgeland, is one of Scott's less terrible films. We may not think it worth doing, but sustaining this level of empty stylishness - saturated colours, deep focus and, a stupid new trick, snatches of text on the screen - for two and a half hours is not an easy thing to do. He's a professional, all right.

Washington, who in recent years seems to have totally abandoned his cosier screen persona, plays a former government hit man with a drinking problem and an unaccountable fondness for Linda Ronstadt. Down on his luck in Mexico City, he takes a job guarding moppet du jour Dakota Fanning, the child of a Mexican businessman and an American ice maiden, from the attentions of kidnappers.

Now, normally we would not reveal any significant plot details from the second half of a picture, but, considering that the first hour of Man on Fire consists of little else but Washington driving Fanning to the swimming pool, that hardly seems possible in this case. Just as Denzel begins to warm to his charge, she is abducted by hoods and, following a botched ransom drop, apparently executed. (Would they really do that to America's little diddums? It'll cost you €8 or so to find out.)

You wouldn't believe how upset the hero gets. "He's an artist of death," his pal Christopher Walken says. "And he's planning his masterpiece."

Following The Punisher and Shane Meadows's brilliant Dead Man's Shoes, this is the third orgy of revenge we have been offered in as many weeks. Of that unhappy trilogy, Man on Fire is probably the noisiest, certainly the most racist and, though The Punisher runs it close, just about the most sinisterly right-wing. That said, like cheap white wine, the more you have of it - and there's plenty here - the more immune you become to its distastefulness.