Man on Fire 2004 is Tony Scott's Leon: The Professional

Blender Dumbass
October 19, 2025

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Critics gave negative reviews to 2004 Tony Scott's film Man on Fire because of "grim story that gets harder to take the longer it goes on". Are you fucking serious? How then Lars Von Trier movies get good reviews? Something isn't quite right here. To be frank, the film is very ultra-cinematic. Which could rub some critics the wrong way. Scott doesn't just direct the shit out of it. He also edits the shit out of it. Making one of the coolest directed films in existence. Which if you think about it, isn't particularly what critics find as a serious picture. And yes, the film is grim. At times it feel like a horror film. Not just a thriller. But the film is a rather satisfactory experience.

The plot ( taken from a 1980 book "Man on Fire" from A. J. Quinnell ) is kind of similar to the plot of Luc Besson's film Leon: The Professional. In the original book ( and a 1987 film based on it ) the story happens in Italy. Scott makes his movie in Mexico, to update the story to the geopolitics at the time of filming. In Leon the main character is Italian. In both Leon and Man on Fire a cool ass assassin guy meets a smart as fuck little girl that takes his depression away and that falls in-love with the man. In both films, the girl is in danger. In both films the cops are the bad guys. And in both films, spoiler alert, to save the girl, the guy dies in the end. Both films, even include a scene, towards the end, where the two characters state in pure English that they love each other.

Leon was played wonderfully by Jean Reno, so Denzel Washington had a challenge to fill those boots. Yet we all know Denzel Washington is a fucking miracle of an actor. So he fills those boots and even goes harder at times, without apparently even trying. The same is happening with the girl. Matilda, in Leon is played by Natalie Portman ( who actually got an Oscar later ). She is a legend from the very beginning. And Besson is doing a lot of cool stuff with her, to cement her as a legend. Yet somehow it seems that Man on Fire's Lupita ( played by Dakota Fanning ) goes even harder.

Fanning never got her Oscar. She got plenty of other awards and nominations, but not an Oscar. And frankly: what the fuck? Dakota Fanning ( especially at her prime years, as a child actor ) was probably one of the best child-actors in the universe. She was the Julia Butters before there was Julia Butters. ( You know Julia Butters from a Quentin Tarantino picture that also stars Dakota Fanning, called Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood ).

Now here in an interesting observation about Julia Butters, Dakota Fanning and even her sister Elle Fanning. First of all, we almost got Man on Fire from Michael Bay. Michael Bay was one of the directors that the producers of the film were thinking about. But Michael was busy making and promoting Bad Boys II at the time. So Tony Scott did the film. Tony wanted to make the movie back in the 80s ( before there was ever "Leon: The Professional" ). He kind of dropped out of the idea, because of the 1987 film. But he clearly had a passion for the story, as you can tell by watching Man on Fire.

We know that in 2005 Michael Bay made a Steven Spielberg produced film The Island. And in the same year Spielberg himself made a movie with Dakota Fanning called War of the Worlds. Before that, in 2002 Spielberg produced a TV miniseries ( which he didn't direct ) about aliens called Taken starring both Dakota Fanning and her sister Elle. ( On a somewhat unrelated note Luc Besson also produced a series of films called Taken about a guy who rescues his daughter. ) Spielberg also produced a 2011 J. J. Abrams film Super 8 about aliens and kids making movies, where Elle Fanning plays the love interest of the main character, and a kind of protege child-actor ( kind of a fictionalized version of her older sister ).

This Super 8 film has a scene where Joe Lamb asks Ellis ( Elle Fanning ) out, to help him make his movie. It is shot at the front door of her house where a net filter is covering the inside. And where an angry parent, which is totally against it, is present. This scene could be a direct reference to a similar scene in Brian De Palma's 1976 film Carrie. Which if you read my psycho sexual analysis of, it is a movie about how not letting kids be horny is child-abuse. And coincidentally it is a first film of the actor Amy Irving who was the first wife of Steven Spielberg.

Elle Fanning also appears in a 2016 Nicolas Winding Refn film The Neon Demon which is a very psycho-sexual movie, full of this pedophilia theme. The movie shares one production company "Gaumont" with Leon: The Professional. And a similar theme is played with in a different movie she is in, called The Curious Case of Benjamin Button from 2007 directed by David Fincher, who claimed once that all "people are perverts". In this film Elle Fanning is a love interest of an old man, played by Brad Pitt.

Now David Fincher is currently filming a movie called The Adventures of Cliff Booth from a script of Quentin Tarantino. Cliff Booth is played by Brad Pitt once again. And a film is a sequel of Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood with Dakota Fanning and Julia Butters. And Julia Butters was somewhat discovered by Michael Bay for 13 hours. Remember the same Michael Bay that almost did Man on Fire and who later worked with Spielberg while Spielberg was shooting War of the Worlds. A movie about aliens with Dakota Fanning.

In my review of Once Upon a Time... I noticed a reference, where Tarantino shoots Fanning, recreating a very similar shot from War of the Worlds. The thing is, the shot is from a front door of a house, with a net in front of the camera. I speculated that it is Tarantino thematically tying Julia's character Trudi to Dakota's real life as a child actor. But here is a thing. It is also kind of similar to the thing J. J. Abrams does with Elle Fanning. Which is also a reference to Carrie. One of the favorite movies of Quentin Tarantino. What if Tarantino does a triple reference? He references Super 8 ( where Elle Fanning is playing a sort of Trudi character ). He references War of the Worlds and specifically Dakota Fanning in it, at the time of her being the magical child-actor protege herself. And he also references Carrie with the psycho-sexual theme of that scene in Once Upon a Time.... That is some shit. That is some next level 4D chess move. And we all know Tarantino is a fucking genius.

Now before David Fincher used Elle Fanning in his film, in 2006 Tony Scott worked with Elle Fanning too. So Tony Scott worked with both Dakota and Elle Fanning. Which is quite interesting.

Now, I have a very bad theory, but it kind of begs itself to be written down. It is bad, because Tony Scott died in a very unfortunate way. As written on Wikipedia: On 19 August 2012, at approximately 12:30 pm PDT, Scott jumped to his death from the Vincent Thomas Bridge in the San Pedro port district of Los Angeles. So I kind of want to be careful here. Because this is not a joke. And yet I have a very stupid ass theory that begs itself out, from watching the film.

The film has multiple scenes related to suicide. One character commits suicide. And the film treats it as a sort of escape. Maybe that was something that triggered the not so depressed critics. And the other character tries to kill himself but fails toward the beginning of the film. Even the sacrifice scene in the end could be viewed as a sort of heroic suicide moment. It is played so epically that it feels like this the character finally finds some kind of closure by dying.

The official theory for Tony Scott taking his life, is that he had a battle with cancer. But based on testimonies by people like his brother Ridley Scott, the battle with cancer was successful. They defeated it. Or were very close to defeating it. And it seems like even back in 2004, while making Man on Fire Tony Scott already had some suicidal tendencies. And since he wanted to make this film back in the 80s, that could mean, he had similar tendencies for a very long time. So it probably wasn't cancer.

Half a year earlier, on February 23 2012, Dakota Fanning had her 18th birthday. Probably a completely unrelated detail. But think about it. Even in Leon the main character dies for a little girl. Finding his "heroic suicide". And the main character in Man on Fire does the same. Both Leon and Creasy ( the main character in Man on Fire ) are depressed from the start of the film. And both are completely devastated when a little girl shows signs of affection toward them. Leon gets even move depressed and sloppy as his job, when Matilda says "I love you" earlier. And Creasy, after an encounter with her, as she is trying to create a friendship with him, literally tries to shoot himself with a gun, that malfunctions. Later both guys become less depressed as their friendship with the girl continues. Again, Dakota Fanning played the girl in Man of Fire.

I don't want to write any more of that theory, just because I don't want to claim things that might not be true. And just because those things involve a real suicide of a real person. A person that a lot of people respect. An yet that is a very interesting list of coincidences.

I remember as a kid in Ukraine one day when I was maybe 9 or 10 ( same age as the girl in the film ) I was looking for what to watch on TV. Ukrainian television has a way of showing the severity of film, without bashing the audience too much. You have, in the corner a little symbol. It is either a green circle, a yellow triangle, or a red square. You can think of them as PG, PG-13 and R. Basically, if something is a red square, it is intense. I remember once starting to watch this cool movie called Man on Fire. It had a cute little girl, about my age ( she actually is a bit older than me. Elle is closer to my age, if you want to be nit-picky about it ). And yet this movie was not with a yellow triangle. It was with a red square. I knew I was watching something really intense. And yet I didn't want to stop watching it. I sat through all the violence and all of the intensity, hoping that the girl is still alive. Hoping that our depressed hero will find her and save her...

Re-watching it today, obviously was a different experience. I knew the plot of the film more or less. I was mesmerized by the execution of it. I was once again reminded of how absolutely legendary Dakota Fanning was at the time. And how amazing Denzel Washington is. I saw Tony Scott finding his unique cinematic voice. A voice that he will reuse in films like Unstoppable and Déjà Vu. And yet I saw a film "too intense" for the critics. A film that reminded me of Lars Von Trier. A film-maker with a diagnosed depression.

When you can't communicate with other people. When you have ideas that others feel too disturbing. When you are different enough that people don't understand. You can't help it but feel hopeless. I'm pretty sure Leon is hopeless because Besson felt hopeless at the time. He literally had a relationship with an underage girl during the production of that movie. Who can understand that? Besson was hopeless. Besson got through a lot of depression. And finally by about 2004 he got completely out it. Thanks Guy Ritchie and Revolver. With the Revolver Besson didn't kill himself, he killed his ego. Even if it resurfaced again, at the time, he killed it for at least some time. And it helped. But Tony Scott didn't have a Revolver that can only kill the ego. Something bugged him. Something nudged him. And by 2012 he couldn't take it anymore.

Happy Hacking!!!