New York Daily News by Jack Mathews

Man on Fire, with a best-ever Denzel Washington, is the first (nonreligious) sure thing to hit the multiplex this year.

Empire by Ian Freer

By no means perfect - a twist in the tale overextends its already lengthy running time - but it is terrific fun.

Miami Herald by René Rodríguez

The dead-serious Man on Fire awakens a genuine sense of bloodlust in the viewer. This is a slick, big-budget, A-list production designed to stoke our basest impulses -- to make us long for, and cheer at, bloody, merciless vengeance.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer by William Arnold

It's resolutely grim and rather predictable but very compelling, and it offers a commanding star vehicle for Denzel Washington.

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

For what Man on Fire delivers, it's worth enduring Scott's hyperkinetic visual techniques.

Chicago Reader by Andrea Gronvall

Washington's stoic persona here conceals a volcanic rage, and the cast of pros--including Giancarlo Giannini, Mickey Rourke and Rachel Ticotin--support him with relish.

Slate by David Edelstein

No one rises above the material, though, except for Walken, who looks pleased with the paycheck and the top-shelf tequila. As a shady lawyer, Mickey Rourke is smooth and funny, but recognizable only by his familiar purr.

Austin Chronicle by Marjorie Baumgarten

Ultimately more bleak and furious than most Hollywood tales of this sort. Man on Fire plays it out to the bloody end, like there’s no fire extinguisher in Mexico but for the oceans that hold its borders.

Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington

Man on Fire, which starts off as a good example of super-glitz moviemaking, gradually turns into a movie on fire -- another helter-skelter, big-studio spending spree. Too bad. It could use a lot more of Walken, Fanning and some more honest drama.

USA Today by Mike Clark

Not too many R-rated revenge pics depend on "Uptown Girls'" Dakota Fanning for the stronger scenes. Yet once the 10-year-old star exits the picture, Man on Fire starts blowing a lot of smoke.

Variety by Todd McCarthy

One of the more absorbing and palatable entries in the rather disreputable "Death Wish"-style self-appointed vigilante sub-genre.

The Hollywood Reporter by Kirk Honeycutt

The film is always watchable, and the confrontations contain undeniable edgy excitement. But even if this weren't a remake, it would be a remake. Hollywood filmmakers have fished these waters so thoroughly that it's virtually impossible to land a big catch.

L.A. Weekly by John Patterson

A schizophrenic outing from habitually hysterical director Tony Scott (True Romance, The Fan), Man on Fire is a movie of two unreconcilable halves.

Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan

Despite its high craft level and Washington's participation in it, this movie's showy violence is finally as deadening as the over-emphatic violence in these kinds of films generally is.

TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh

Scott swaddles this fundamentally straightforward revenge story in a jumble of bleary freeze frames, random changes of color saturation and film stock, jump cuts and stuttering montages, splashing text from some menacing word soup onto the resulting collage of chicly disturbing images.

New York Post by Megan Lehmann

Where Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill: Vol. 2" radiates freshness and vigor, Man on Fire feels vaguely like something left over from the 1980s, when action heroes were one-note tough guys methodically picking off baddies.

The New York Times by Dana Stevens

This is a time-tested movie con, but rarely has it been deployed so contemptibly.

Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

The movie's mortal failing is echoed in the religious medal Pita gives Creasy in a gift of innocent, uplifting love: Finding heft or coherence within all the lugubrious agitation is a lost cause worthy of St. Jude.