Dreampanther
We all face the reaper.
Originally posted by John Murdoch
Can I ask how the book ended? IMO, Man on Fire is both Denzel's and Tony Scott's finest two hours on film.
Two major changes that changed the tone completely, imo.
1) Pinta wasn't "miraculously" still alive and unharmed after weeks and weeks of captivity. She was found dead in a car, suffocated on her own vomit. She had also been repeatedly raped by her captors (hence my derisive "Hollywood ending" comments).
2) This meant that Creasy didn't just get out of hospital to start hunting them down. Like the mercenary he was, with decades of experience and training, he mapped out a campaign to wipe them out. All of them.
Thus:
His best friend and long-time mercenary partner, Guido (not in the movie, though Walken's character is based on him) arranges a place for him to stay on an island in Malta and he goes off to rebuild his strength, regain his skills and lay out his plans.
Due to the connection he had with Pinta, he finds himself able to experience love again and slowly falls in love with a woman, Nadia, while on the island. She knows about Pinta and his plans and supports him. When he's ready, he leaves her and starts his war:
Everything he does, every kidnapper and enforcer he finds, extracts information from, blows up, executes - is all designed to do one thing: Terrify the guy at the top to the point where he decides the only thing to do is hole up in his base, built like a fort and guarded like a prison.
This is exactly what Creasy wants. The one thing they never fought was somebody like him. He is not a tough guy from the streets with a grudge. He is not an assassin. He didn't do covert ops. He is one of the deadliest soldiers alive, with decades of military experience in some of the worst places on earth, used to full-on assaults.
Now, picture this guy, doing a HALO drop late at night, stocked up on ammo, with grenades, submachine guns, assault rifle...
Then imagine what happened when he dropped into the middle of a fortress, facing guys whose experience consists of bullying shop owners and kidnapping children. They had nowhere to run. They had nowhere to hide. They had never been in a war before.
The book ends with an epilogue, where Creasy returns to the island, wounded (everyone thinks he's dead) and finds Nadia waiting for him with news: She's pregnant.