WHAT?!?!?! Man on Fire was an A+ movie if you ask me, though it did have quite a few cinematography tricks to it, including focus and the wierd ass way of doing subtitles but that was so much better than In the Cut"s constant muddy focus. In Man on Fire at least it got me to focus on a perticular part of the frame but that was not so in In the Cut. In that it was just frustrating I wasn't paying that much attention to the movie itself because of all the focus issues-that didn't happen with Man on Fire [/b][/quote]Man on Fire was horrible to me, and here are my reasons. It's a simple revenge film, that was Hollywoodized from the novel. After all, they couldn't really have the girl die, because as we all know cartels are very understanding people [/sarcasm]. The whole film is done like a music video and destroys the good cinematography it could've had. Denzel takes a shitload of bullets, and brings major revenge out, and in several scenes it's ridiculous. There's one scene where Denzel rocket-launches a car, and then in slow motion (while engulfed by flames!) throws more grenades. The fast-paced editing served as much purpose as the black and white photography in Thirteen Days. And as if it all couldn't get worse, it does. Creasy sacrifices himself for the girl and dies in the car. Now, it could've ended looking at those mountains and at least be decent with the ending, but no. Because the average audience needs to be pacified with some kind of "justice served" scene, we cut to a very out of place scene with "The Voice" being killed off. Which brings me to more of a complaint then a flaw, what was the point of Creasy's birth/death dates considering he isn't real?

Overall it's an over the top action film with an old plot that's very predictable with a horrid direction from Scott, and it's looking like the same for Domino because he's using the epileptic editing again. Now, while the editing was a talented piece of work in it's own right, it was grossly overused for no reason. I can see it used well for one or two scenes, most notably the "Failure to Fire" scene in Creasy's room, but in the end it's only a cinematic version of X-treme marketing.

Was I entertained? Yes, and I can watch it again, but a lot of bad films can easily entertain me.

I can name camera tricks in other films that actually served a purpose. As for In the Cut I haven't seen it, nor do I have an interest to.