AJ Quinnell’s 1980 novel Man on Fire has spawned four wholly unique film adaptations, but Netflix’s new series has the distinction of being the first to lack an identity of its own. Granted, expecting any filmmaker to one-up the late, great Tony Scott is a tall order, but even the grimy-romantic energy of the Élie Chouraqui’s 1987 adaptation would be preferable to showrunner Kyle Killen’s flavorless seven-episode series.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is more than capable of following in Scott Glenn or Denzel Washington’s footsteps as John Creasy, an ex-C.I.A. agent who’s content to drink himself into a stupor until the job of serving as bodyguard to a young girl, Poe (Billie Boullet), falls in his lap. He brings undeniable intensity and presence to the role, but it’s in service of a plot that doesn’t give his character anything to play off of beyond this meager PTSD setup.
What’s also different here is the scenery—the series takes place in a bland version of Rio de Janeiro—and the particulars of how Creasy finds his way back to his old self. The plot takes an explosive left turn at the end of the first episode, but what follows lacks the kinetic drama of earlier adaptations. And Creasy’s relationship to Poe, the very foundation of the story, is held together by a shared loss and little else until halfway through the season.
The show’s most intriguing through line comes by way of Alice Braga’s Melo, a street-smart cabbie whose connection to Rio’s favelas allows Creasy and Poe to take refuge there at one point. The compelling, City of God-lite drama we see in the favelas, though, takes a backseat to the thinly plotted machinations of the Brazilian secret service and the crime lords who love them.
The series does occasionally make good on some basic thrills, like a three-way standoff between Creasy, the henchmen holding Melo hostage, and the favela gangs themselves. Elsewhere, a break-in to a Brazilian prison gradually morphs into an ensemble spy mission straight out of Mission: Impossible. In between, we get expected moments of Creasy employing some gruesome, C.I.A.-approved tactics to obtain information.
The series relies heavily on Creasy being an indomitable force of revenge, but because we never really feel the weight of what he lost early on in the season, or get a sense of an attempt to struggle against his basest instincts, his actions wind up feeling like overkill rather than justice. He’s just another stoic action hero, without any of the depth or danger of this character’s past portrayals, or any of his far cooler, angrier peers in the genre.
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