Let me start out by saying that this film is a noir - and yes, I know that everyone is supposed to die in a noir, but this is Hollywood. You can't expect female extras to die in a Hollywood film - not likely at all.

The man's name is Creasy (Den-zelll), and he's been too long in the wars... any war. He drinks. He's a mess, at odds with God and the world. He wants to die, I'm guessing. But he doesn't - well, there wouldn't be a movie otherwise. He meets up with an old friend in the guise of Christopher Walken (a good guy? You'll be surprised) and starts hanging around El Paso, where Walken's character "dropped out" several years before, to marry, raise a family and barbecue hamburger patties (not a patch on our South African braai, I may say.) Walken gets him a job as a cheap bodyguard to a not-so-rich rich guy. Kidnapping appears to be the national sport in this Hollywood Mexico; the bodyguard is really for Samos's daughter, an adorable blonde mite named Pita. (Gorgeous kid, bears watching. She could be a Michelle Pfeiffer some day.)

Creasy moves into an upstairs room with a mad parrot and paintings and a sortof old world kind of ambience. The sort I might enjoy. Washington plays the part of a broken, emptied man with such clarity - every expression, every posture, every glance is so full of feeling, so emotional and yet so subtle. The man is an artist. It is meeting the child that brings the character back to himself, and helps him live again; and so, when it all goes wrong, the broken emptiness is turned into passionate determination. Creasy won't stop 'till he finds the criminals and ices 'em (er, I mean, blows em up, or away, or just into smaller bits). The image of the avenger is burned indelibly onto the mind in a series of iconic scenes that are truly brilliant - in the sense of bright, glittering, hard.

The image of the cage is a powerful metaphor throughout the movie - it is inevitable that there will be caged birds, or gates, or iron bars in every scene. The physical images hint at the feelings of the characters - Creasy's mental and spiritual prison is internal, while everyone else is as much held in by gates and bars as outside threats are held out by them. The entire city is made to feel like some huge prison, while Creasy floats through it like a quietly-enraged, smoldering spectre of death. I felt a definite sense of John Woo's choreographed violence (although the actual violence is swift and jarring; it is everything else that is balletic.)

The music, a woman singing in Spanish, reminded me of the theme from Gladiator, and gave the same distant feeling, as if I were floating along with the storyline, unable to stop. There was a sense of inevitability. The feeling of being distanced from the events on the screen was heightened by the moody, dark lighting, the flickering editing and the strange faded colours; it felt that whatever happened, happened very long ago, very far away, and that it was all somehow as iconic as the ubiquitous Catholic backdrops, the disturbing religious imagery of bleeding hearts, ivory-faced saints, portraits of smiling popes. (Yep - freaky for a protestant evangelical, I tell ya.)

A very elegant movie - after a while the violence sickened me, though. Revenge is a dish best not served at all. When Creasy is coaching Pita to help her improve her swimming, he tells her that "the sound of the gun sets you free". This may or may not be; I can't really agree. Revenge tarnishes only your own soul; the only person your hatred hurts is you. This is why forgiveness is really an act of freeing yourself, because that which we hate, we bind to ourselves through our hatred. And while justice is a good thing, where would the human race be without mercy?

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