Man on Fire Review: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II Leads Netflix's Good-Enough Action Thriller Reboot

Netflix's Man on Fire series is standard genre fare. It's a serviceable action thriller with nothing distinctive or elevated about it. If you love this kind of thing, it's a fun way to shut off your brain for a few hours. The story moves quickly and efficiently, which counts for a lot. But if you're looking for something more substantive, Man on Fire won't light you up.

The show, from creator Kyle Killen (Halo), is the third adaptation of A.J. Quinnell's 1980 novel, following a 1987 film starring Scott Glenn from director Élie Chouraqui and Tony Scott's 2004 version starring Denzel Washington, the best-known (and best) version. The series, however, is a very loose adaptation, keeping the broad strokes of character and premise but telling a new and different story. 

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II stars as John Creasy, a former CIA operative suffering from PTSD after losing his entire team in an operation that went wrong four years earlier. He's drunk, living in squalor, and suicidal when his old friend and former team leader Paul Rayburn (Bobby Cannavale) offers him a job working for his private security and intelligence firm in Rio de Janeiro. Creasy quickly ends up in the middle of a far-reaching conspiracy. As he tries to protect Rayburn's teenage daughter, Poe (Billie Boullet), from assailants, he finds something to live for again. Together, with the help of taxi driver Melo (Alice Braga), they navigate Rio's colorful underworld in search of the people who took everything from them. 

The girl is the biggest change the series makes from prior versions of Man on Fire, and not for the better. Previously, she was always kidnapped, and Creasy's revenge mission was to find the people who took her. Creasy worked as a bodyguard for her family, and at first he resisted developing any emotional connection to her, but he gradually developed a paternal relationship with her, and that was what gave him a reason to live. In the series, the girl is older, and she becomes something like Creasy's sidekick as they get to know each other after the show's equivalent to the kidnapping. The decision to take away the emotional foundation built by spending time with Creasy as he grows to care about this girl and replacing it with a less resonant, purely revenge-driven plot makes the story less convincing and satisfying. It's a bold change that makes this version of Man on Fire into its own thing rather than a straight retread, but it removes the thing that distinguished Man on Fire from any other run-of-the-mill revenge thriller. If you're going into the series unfamiliar with prior versions, it may not bother you much, but if you are, you'll miss the scenes where Washington teaches Dakota Fanning how to swim. 

6.7

Man on Fire

at Netflix

Like

• Entertaining
• Efficient plotting
• Moments of unexpectedly good dialogue

Dislike

• Some changes from source material aren't improvements
• The main character is too emotionally inaccessible

On that note, Abdul-Mateen has the unenviable task of taking over a role associated with Denzel, and the show's conception of John Creasy does him no favors. His Creasy is a taciturn, clenched-jawed warrior at nearly all times, which gets to be flavorless. Abdul-Mateen is hardly given any opportunities to demonstrate his range or be charming. There's very little humor, levity, or warmth in Man on Fire, which makes the savage acts of "enhanced interrogation" Creasy carries out more disturbing than they're perhaps meant to be. Abdul-Mateen is physically a great action hero, though. His height and broad-shouldered physique make his fight scenes feel imposing and hard hitting. 

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Of course, it is unfair to only compare Man on Fire to its predecessor, and when taken on its own terms, there are plenty of things about the show that work well. It transitions nicely to a TV structure, with differentiated episodes — a late-season episode where Creasy has to break into and out of a prison is a highlight — and a procedural-style cast formation, where every member of Creasy's team has their own job to do and their own character arc. Two young men from a favela who are brought into the fold by Melo have a lovely subplot where the harder one helps the softer one toughen up without losing who he is. What could have been a distracting throwaway plot on a different show becomes Man on Fire's most emotionally resonant thread, and a pleasantly surprising one. 

The show's dialogue is peppered with perceptive lines. "I have seen many situations where having something to fight for brings out the worst in people," one character says. Another describes Rio, where the low-income neighborhoods are up on hills, as "the only city I know where the poor live above the rich." Moments like these are attention-grabbing for their unexpected poetry amidst all the brutality and bloodshed. The action sequences are unspectacular but solid. 

Man on Fire didn't need to be made for a third time, but if five different actors can play Jack Ryan, there's no reason three separate guys shouldn't play the substantially less famous John Creasy over the course of 40 years, either. The show is different enough from what came before — and well-made enough — to justify its existence. Only by a little bit, but that's all it needs, because its ambitions are relatively modest. It's not trying to be anything more than a pretty good action thriller, which was its ceiling to begin with. 

Premieres: Thursday, April 30 on Netflix
Who's in it: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Billie Boullet, Alice Braga, Scoot McNairy, Iago Xavier, Jefferson Baptista, Bobby Cannavale
Who's behind it: Kyle Killen (showrunner), Steven Caple Jr. (director)
For fans of: No-frills action thrillers, Extraction 
How many episodes we watched: 7 of 7