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Fanning is a gutsy little actress. She gives Pita quick humor and a convincing intelligence that cuts through the duplicity of grownups. Washington's performance has three phases. In the opening scenes, he's the strong, silent, morose type. When he relaxes into Pita's friendship, he becomes … well … a lot like Denzel Washington. And then comes Phase Three, in which he's as forceful as a tank, crushing the bad guys in his path like so many dandelions. He's riveting to watch, but does he make Creasy an admirable hero?

In one scene, he torments a bad guy by cutting off his fingers one by one. In another, he clinically describes what will happen when he places a small explosive in his victim's hindquarters and then detonates it from a safe distance away. It's as brutal as anything in Kill Bill, but Creasy's "roaring rampage of revenge" is offered as profound heroism, goading the audience into cheering for his righteous anger. This knocks the film off balance and sends it down the slippery slope from the high ground of justice to the gutter of vigilante violence.

Newspaper headlines give us a hint as to why these brutal revenge fantasies are so appealing to audiences right now. Here's an American hero, burdened by grief and moral confusion, entering a foreign environment, warned that there is corruption and devastating power lurking unseen in the shadows. He's angry that someone he loves has been violated, and he's determined to find the hiding places of the "terrorists" (in this case, kidnappers), root them out, and destroy them, even if he has to upset the typical rules of law and order in the process. Viewers seem ready to cheer for American heroes who decide to mete out justice on their own terms, outside the view of news cameras, while paying lip service to Christian faith.

Radha Mitchell and Denzel Washington

Creasy's Christ-figure qualities are especially dissonant. How are we to feel about a man so deliberately portrayed as a Jesus stand-in who is more inclined to recommend suicide than repentance?

But it is unlikely that audiences will find much opportunity to reflect on these things while the film roars along. Tony Scott buries any thoughtfulness in his story under layers of editing gimmicks, stylistic flourishes, and an obvious delight in the opulence of the rich. (The interiors of this film's palatial homes must have cost as much as The Lord of the Rings trilogy.) The whole two-and-a-half hour running ordeal feels like a hyperactive music video, the frantic, jittery, dizzying, rapid-cut, overexposed footage disorienting and distracting us.

For Scott, it is not sufficient to provide subtitles for those speaking in other languages—the text must be entertaining. These subtitles jump, flicker, fade, and slide all over the screen. Worse, they even appear for lines spoken in plain English, emphasizing certain quotes as if the director decided his actors weren't speaking forcefully enough. It's the first film to be presented everywhere in a Closed Captioned for the Hearing Impaired format.

Perhaps Scott worried that moviegoers would be bored with anything but explosions, so he stuffed the interludes with an assault of artificial activity. Or perhaps he wants to numb us to any twinge of conscience. He relentlessly reminds us of what the enemy has done, re-playing echoes of Pita's desperate screams, as if we could ever forget what is driving Creasy's rage.

Denzel Washington and Christopher Walken

It says something about Washington's gravitas that his performance remains compelling despite the filmmakers' attention deficit disorder. Also worth noting: Christopher Walken plays Creasy's old war buddy who gets him the job. Walken makes a strong impression, but then mysteriously vanishes about two-thirds of the way through, probably because he's forced to say lines like "Creasy's art is death. He's about to paint his masterpiece."

As long as "heroes" like Creasy continue to appear onscreen, it will not be hard to understand why the news is filled with stories of desperate men taking the law into their own hands. We are right to hope for justice when something is done wrong. But those sinners who have experienced grace should never relish the sight of flawed human beings being spectacularly destroyed. We should attend to the execution of justice with solemn humility, grieved by the evil of which we are all capable, sobered by its consequences.

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