“Man on Fire,” premiering Thursday on Netflix, is the third adaptation of A. J. Quinnell’s 1980 novel of the same name and maintains the tradition of setting the action in a new place, with a new story. Following the films “Man on Fire” (2004, starring Denzel Washington, set in Mexico City) and “Man on Fire” (1987, starring Scott Glenn, set in Italy), it stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, unfolds in Rio de Janeiro and has little to do with previous versions, apart from pairing a damaged security operative and an imperiled young girl.
Abdul-Mateen plays John Creasy, a CIA operative who hit the skids after an operation he was supervising remotely went fatally wrong, leaving him with a case of PTSD and a drinking problem. Four years later, his old friend Paul Rayburn (Bobby Cannavale) arrives to rescue him from himself, carting him down to Rio, where Rayburn is working for a security company on a construction site — there is a presidential election coming, and protests are feared. Not to go into events that surprised the heck out of me, but a supposed act of terrorism propels Creasy, along with Rayburn’s 16-year-old daughter, Poe (Billie Boullet), into a mobile game of Who Can You Trust, as Creasy seeks answers and revenge. (His touch is not light.)
Much of the series takes place in a Rio favela, the type of hill-climbing shanty town art film lovers will know from “Black Orpheus” and “City of Men” (also a 2002 Brazilian TV series), where Creasy and Poe wind up by the grace of Valeria Melo (Alice Braga), a driver Creasy hires who offers them shelter from those who seek to kill them.
“When you drive a car you don’t just meet lots of different people,” she says, “you learn to really see them.”
“What else do you see?” asks Creasy.
“Someone who needs a friend.”
Bit by bit a team comes together. (I am a sucker for that narrative device.) Along with Valeria, a voice of wisdom, there are Livro (Jefferson Baptista), a sensitive child of the streets, and someone her own age for Poe to not mind adults with; Vico (Iago Xavier), a gang member protective of Livro; and Ivan (Alex Ozerov-Meyer), a rich-boy former associate of Creasy with a taste for adventure — an ad hoc Impossible Mission Force who will pull off some implausibly complicated capers, and, dare I say it, a family. Back at Langley, Tappan (Scoot McNairy) and Moncrief (Paul Ben-Victor) monitor the action in Brazil. (Caveats regarding trust apply.)
Twists and turns included, “Man on Fire,” created by Kyle Killen, is straightforward action entertainment, a traditional payback drama with generally clear-cut good guys and bad guys, once you sort them out. It’s the sort of show that should play well globally (American characters aside, it has little to do with America), not so much meat-and-potatoes entertainment as carne e batatas. In its colorful funkiness, the setting elevates the action — Alejandro Martínez (“House of the Dragon”) is the director of photography and gets great results wherever he points his camera — of which there is a good deal, more brutal than balletic and often not a little upsetting. (More than “not a little upsetting” are some unduly extended scenes of torture.) Similarly, the cast wrings some poetry out of the prosaic, often aphoristic dialogue.
Abdul-Mateen, who starred in the Marvel series “Wonder Man” (in which he was sweet and funny) and as Doctor Manhattan in TV’s “Watchmen” (in which he was blue), is what the clinicians call a splendid physical specimen, as well as a fine actor. Here he is neither funny nor blue — sweet, at a stretch. “I think that might be the first time I’ve seen you smile,” Poe tells him 14 minutes into the second episode, up until which time he’s been consistently stone-faced. (They have simultaneously quoted her father’s nonmetaphorical maxim, “You learn to play chess, you learn to play life.”)
Is it a spoiler to say he’ll soften by the end? That we will glimpse a gentler, healthier Creasy? As Poe, the excellent Boullet — who was Anne Frank for Disney+ — has feeling enough for both of them. Come for the punching, stay for the healing.
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