Man on Fire With Two-Time Academy Award

¶ … Man on Fire" with two-time Academy Award winner Denzel Washington; and also starring Dakota Fanning, Christopher Walken, and Mickey Rourke, among others. The film was produced in 2004; it runs 1 hour and 50 minutes.

The drug of choice for the protagonist, former U.S. intelligence agent turned bodyguard Creasy, is alcohol. Creasy takes a swig of liquor from a flask while riding in a car, he pours Jack Daniels bourbon into a short glass in his bedroom and drinks from a glass, and after being asked what his flaws might be, he says, "I drink." He takes large swigs of straight liquor on numerous occasions but he is never seen doing other drugs like cocaine or marijuana.

The use of alcohol by the protagonist Creasy is seen as part of his every-day activities. He doesn't seem particularly pleasured by his consumption, but on the other hand there is nothing terribly negative about his imbibing because he doesn't get noticeably drunk more than once. In that one scene when he is drinking heavily and seems inebriated, he attempts to commit suicide but the gun fails to fire properly and once he realizes luck has kept him alive, he begins to curtail his heavy alcohol consumption.

FOUR: There are several consequences for the protagonist's alcohol consumption in this film. He is grumpy and edgy when he is drinking. He doesn't interact well with the young girl he has been hired to guard when he is drinking. She wants to be his friend but he is clipped, sharp-edged in his dialogue with her, and clearly the alcohol prevents him from being as sociable as he would like to be. He also appears to become depressed when he has had a lot of liquor, and a heavy does of alcohol on one particular night led him to attempt suicide, so the alcohol (which is a depressant) causes him to be depressed, or at least, it brings out more emotion from his ongoing depression. Later in the movie when he gives up alcohol, he is a charming, helpful, gracious person who interacts and converses politely and effectively with the girl he is paid to guard.

FIVE: The youthful reaction to the protagonist's heavy drinking would likely be negative; the reason for this is because the protagonist's expressions are dark, brooding and unhappy when he is consuming liquor straight from a flask or from a glass with no ice or mix.

SIX: In the text Drugs and Society (Hanson, et al., 2011), the authors quote several perspectives from individuals who drink to varying degrees or have had relatives or parents who drank a lot. The "second perspective" testimonial is interesting because the person's grandfather had died -- his liver was "shot from two much drinking" -- before his time but it didn't matter to this writer (p. 54). He went to college, got in with a drinking crowd, and drank a lot. That got him into trouble with police, the campus Dean of Students and his friends. Now that he is a non-drinking, he is puzzled as to how drinkers "want to keep drinking," and that was the case in "Man On Fire," as the protagonist drank booze out of a flask in the morning. Why would someone drink liquor in the morning, as though they depended on that alcohol? On page 56 Hanson claims there is a "strong probability" that alcohol and tobacco use at a young age will lead to marijuana, cocaine and other hard drugs. In the film "Man On Fire" this was not the case; the protagonist was only on alcohol, though he quit during the film and turned to the Bible.

SEVEN: In a Journal of Psychoactive Drugs article the author points to a research study that shows people who use alcohol or marijuana seek to lose "…consciousness of space and time," and that also goes for those who just drink alcohol (Lorencova, 2011, p. 185). Clearly in the film the protagonist just wanted to get lost in his booze and didn't want to interact with anything other than his liquor. The article also posited that the use of chemical substances for some users might be in order to seek "a greater level of spirituality, or mysticism," and this might have been the case for the protagonist in "Man On Fire" because he occasionally read the Bible, but once he quit drinking liquor, he turned to the Bible more often.