A suicidal mercenary sets out to rescue the girl he was hired to protect, the girl who gave him a reason to live, after she’s kidnapped for ransom.

Robb Ross:

I agree that redemption is the theme in this movie.? The theme is planted in the 6th minute of the film when? the main character, John? Creasy, a troubled man, troubled about his past, asks “Do you think God will ever forgive us for what we’ve done?”

That said, loglines are about objective goals, not subjective needs.? Objective goals are a concrete problem a character intentionally struggles to solve.? Solutions to subjective needs are never intentionally sought.? In Act 1, the protagonist still has all his defense mechanisms up; he? cannot admit he has a subjective problem,? Or if he (reluctantly) admits he does, he’s discounts its gravity and at best is only coping with the problem, not solving it.

Solutions to subjective issues are unintentionally arrived at in the course of working out the objective problem.? As events play out, the ultimate solution to Creasy’s subjective problem, the answer to the thematic question raised in the 6th minute, is to sacrifice his life to save hers.? That is not a solution he would have accepted? in Act 1.? (Because he had not become emotionally bonded to the girl.)? Nor, I think,? immediately after the midpoint.? He knows his life is at risk, but he intends to save her if he can, wreak revenge no matter what.? And stay alive.

So in a logline the subjective need and the implied character arc is stated in terms of a character flaw.? In this case he’s suicidal.? A symptom of that is excessive drinking.

My favorite definition of a plot is “a conspiracy against the protagonist”.? And that is certainly the case here.? The plot conspires so that the only way he can save the girl is to sacrifice his life.?

Aidan:

I think it is debatable whether “Man on Fire” is composed of two different plots. It depends on how one defines and applies the term “plot”.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle in his classic treatise on tragedy, “The Poetics”, established the first working definition of “plot”, a definition that has prevailed.? Aristotle defined a plot in terms of a unity of action (not of character). Of one action, “the structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whose will be disjointed and disturbed.” (Chapter 8)

And then we have the dramatic principle of “Chekhov’s gun”, named after Anton Chekhov, the great Russian dramatist. Chekhov wrote that if you introduce a gun in the 1st Act of your play, it’s got to be fired in the 2nd Act.? If you introduce a potential threat in the 1st half, you have to deliver on it in the 2nd half.

“Man on Fire” opens with a title card about the plague of kidnappings for ransom in Mexico and then dramatizes it with a specific incident. Having planted the “gun” of kidnapping in the 1st Act, (which is why the protagonist has been hired), the film must fire it in the 2nd.

Which it does: the girl is kidnapped. The protagonist has failed to achieve his objective goal, to protect the girl. End of that plot, right?

Well, maybe not. This is not the forum to go into the weeds.? Suffice it to say that based upon my reading of “The Poetics”, the unity of action? in “Man on Fire” is the ongoing threat of kidnappings for ransom. The unity of action is provided by the bad guys, not the good guy.

I submit that if one defines “unity of action” narrowly, solely in terms of whether the protagonist succeeds in achieving his initial objective goal, than logically it leads to a disjunctive conclusion that subverts the meaning of the term.

FWIW