Man on Fire TV reboot series: Netflix thriller is surprisingly solid thanks to its lead star’s gravitas

Denzel Washington wasn’t the first actor to play John Creasey, the PTSD-plagued bodyguard who cuts a violent swath through a network of baddies when his young charge is kidnapped in the 2004 movie Man on Fire.

Scott Glenn had portrayed an earlier version – renamed Christian Creasey – in a 1987 film, which was more faithful to the original book’s setting.

Does that heap more pressure on Yahya Abdul-Mateen II or is it lessened? He’s not walking in just Washington’s footsteps, even if that’s the iteration remembered in the popular imagination, but is part of a wider collective. Safety in numbers, right?

The Washington movie, directed by Tony Scott, was a grim, pro-vigilante action thriller that relentlessly plods on.

This 2026 series, perhaps by virtue of its extended screentime, clocking in at seven episodes, has more room to breathe. That works in its favour, allowing its filmmakers to share the love with its secondary characters, and give the audience a break from violence and vengeance.

The 1980 book by A.J. Quinell situated the story in Italy, which the 1987 film kept, while the 2004 shifted it to Mexico. This reboot changes it again, moving the story to Rio de Janeiro where former CIA agent John Creasey (Abdul-Mateen) has landed after he suffered a horrific episode in which he was the only person left alive after an ambushed operation.

Saddled with PTSD and survivor’s guilt, John is in a bad place. A former colleague, Paul Rayburn (Bobby Cannavale) wants to help him reset so he asks him to join an investigative team for the Brazilian president (Billy Blanco Jr) and his right-hand man (Thomas Aquino).

When Paul and his family are killed in a massive terrorist bombing, Creasey finds himself protecting the only survivor, Paul’s daughter Poe (Billie Boulet), who becomes a target when it’s discovered she saw the face of one of the perpetrators.

Creasey and Poe can’t trust the authorities, so they turn to some locals, including cab driver Valeria (Alice Braga), and her connections in a favela, Livro (Jefferson Baptista) and Vico (Iago Xavier) to not just survive but also untangle the conspiracy that has turned them into wanted fugitives.

For a story that has one overarching story, Man on Fire has managed to make it feel episodic (as TV should), so that most episodes have one defining section, often structured through Rio’s geography (although the series was filmed in Mexico City and Sao Paulo as well as Rio).

That included a chapter inside one of the favelas, and rather than portray as it some kind of slum, it captured a slice of its vibrancy and community, and its own system of law and order.

Man on Fire has its flaws - some of it is repetitive, and plot twists are rote and predictable – but this is largely a solid thriller series.

The genre is teeming on streaming platforms and while the show will try to leverage the semi-familiarity of the source material and its predecessor adaptations, it’s not as though John Creasey is such an iconic character that the curiosity factor becomes undeniable.

It doesn’t have to be, because Man on Fire’s greatest asset is Abdul-Mateen. He may not yet be a household name to casually interested audiences, not like Washington is, but he should be.

With exemplary performances in the likes of Candyman, The Trial of the Chicago 7, his Emmy-winning role in Watchmen and his recent turn in Wonder Man, Abdul-Mateen has time and again commanded the screen.

His Creasey is restrained and at times emotionally deadened, so terrified is he of connecting with people he could lose again, but there’s also a gradual thawing over the show’s run. He’s an effective physical manifestation of an action hero, able to convey someone who can be hesitant but has muscle memory that kicks in and takes over.

Watching Abdul-Mateen in Man on Fire only reinforced what so many other streaming action shows are missing: a lead with gravitas.

Man on Fire is streaming on Netflix