Man on Fire Movie Review

I promised Djxplicit that I would do this review about a week ago so I guess now is as good a time as any.
Man on Fire stars Denzel Washington as ex-CIA agent (or whatever they never really explained what he used to do) turned body guard John Creasy. Creasy, down on his luck and money, agrees to take a job in Mexico that his freind (Christopher Walken) has set up for him. Apparently in Mexico ,and other Central and South American countries, the kidnapping of affluent peoples children is rampant.

The girl Creasy is sent to protect is a 10 or so year old girl named Pita (Dakota Fanning). Pita is a sweet little girl who, from their first meeting, wants desperately to be Creasy's freind. However Creasy is a shell of his former self. Creasy's problem is that he is now a drunkard. In fact during the first 20 or so minutes of the movie it is rare that you see Creasy without a bottle of Jack Daniels somewhere around him. His alchoholism makes him less sociable and admittadly not as sharp as he once was.

However Pita is such an infectous girl that Creasy's rough exterior is softened as he interacts more and more with Pita. And then in a very harrowing scene we see Pita being kidnapped as Creasy is pumped full of lead. He is hospitalized and on his way to recovery Creasy swears revenge on Pita's captors. For the next hour of the movie we see Creasy mame, toture, and ultimately kill all those he feels respnsible for the kidnapping. The movies goes this way until a very predictable but yet (for me anyway) fitting ending. I thought that this was a great movie. I found myself emotionally invested in Creasy's quest to find the people who took from him the one thing that he lived for, Pita. The problem however is that this movie is terribly predictable, from this review one could basically figure out the ending without much thought. However I dont beleive that this is the movie itself's fault rather that this concept as been tried ineptly so many other times (" A Man Apart" anyone?).