CREASY
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Full Name: |
Creasy |
Codename: |
- |
Nationality: |
American |
Organization: |
None |
Occupation |
Other - Mercenary |
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Creator: |
A. J. Quinnell
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Time Span: |
1980 - 2005 |
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ABOUT THE SERIES
Creasy is a mercenary.
At the start of the recorded adventures, he was one, or at least he had been up to the time he had had enough and needed a break and went six months without anything. To say he was burned out would be an understatement. Years of fighting in strange lands far from a home he no longer called his own, fighting alongside people who might well be killed the next day, all for regimes he did not believe in or causes that meant nothing to him or possibly in the name of a religion he had no faith in at all. It had taken more of a toll on him than he wanted to pay anymore.
Creasy was darn good at being a mercenary, possibly because he had nothing to go home to. A not too pleasant upbringing brought him to the U.S. Marines at age 17 and he found a home. Then a fight with an officer who was getting good men killed resulted in his being kicked out. Needing something to do and having just been trained to be a soldier, he joined the French Foreign Legion. He soon became part of their legendary paratrooper regiment and so began a period of fighting in intense areas and learning how to survive.
He also learned what it mean to fail and a brief time as a POW in Vietnam, before the French left and the American came in showed Creasy how bad life can get. It did not, though, cause him to quit. He got transfered to North Africa where a large group of the French Army disagreed with now President De Gaulle about giving up Algeria. His superiors picked the wrong side and he was again out of a job. He was not, however, out of work. Someone with his hard-earned skills could always find a job in one army or another.
And therein lay the problem. Too much death and no reason to live. He stepped away from it. Unfortunately, he had nowhere to step into.
Then the odd employment offer of being a 'premium' bodyguard and that is when things changed. He did not stay a bodyguard for long but his days of being a soldier-for-hire only were over and different things would come his way that would make up the essence of his days from then on but at the beginning and throughout what happens next, when people talked of Creasy, it was of him as a mercenary. But the talk was highly respectful.
NOVELLAS AND SHORT STORIES
Number of Stories: | 1 |
First Appearance: | 2000 |
Last Appearance: | 2000 |
MOVIES
Number of Movies: | 2 |
First Appearance: | 1987 |
Last Appearance: | 2005 |
Three movies exist based on the first book in the Creasy series Man On Fire.
The first starred Scott Glenn as Creasy and was 'modeled' after the book, breaking away at some very key points. One story that I read talked about how when the author talked to the screenwriter about the differences between the script, the screenwriter was surprised to learn there had been a book. Not a good sign. The movie was okay at best.
The second starred Denzel Washington and followed the concept of the book a lot closer though the locale was moved from Italy to Mexico to take 'advantage' of the fact that kidnappings in Mexico were becoming far too common an occurrence. The author was said to have been happier with the second version because it did not stray as far as the first and had the politeness of having actually used some of the dialogue from the novel.
The first was really, according to what I read, based not so much on the book as on the second movie. A Bollywood treatment of the basic concept, it told of a former military officer racked by guilt over an accidental killing of two children in a skirmish given a chance at redemption in the role of a young girl, daughter of a well-to-do Indian living in Thailand.
I have seen all three movies. All are worth the time spent watching but the Washington one is the best though the third is really quite compelling.
One small point. In the third movie, the character, being Indian, has an Indian name. In the two American versions, the character is given the first name of John though everyone calls him by his last name.
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1 |
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Man On Fire
Director: Elie Chouraqui
Writers: Elie Chouraqui, Sergio Donati
Actors: Scott Glenn as Creasy, Jade Malle as Samantha, Joe Pesci as David, Jonathan Pryce as Michael
Released: 1987
John Creasy is a former CIA agent who is hired as bodyguard for a girl in Italy. The two become close and when she is kidnapped, he gives everything he has to get her back.
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2 |
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Man On Fire
Director: Tony Scott
Writer: Brian Helgeland
Actors: Denzel Washington as Creasy, Dakota Fanning as Lupita Ramos, Christopher Walken as Paul Rayburn, Mickey Rourke as Jordan Kalfus
Released: 2004
Former assassin John Creasy vows to give his all to wipe out those who attacked the little girl under his charge.
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3 |
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Ek Ajnabee (A Man Apart)
Director: Apoorva Lakhia
Writers: Apoorva Lakhia, Manoj Tyagi
Actors: Amitabh Bachchan as Colonel Singh, Rucha Vaidya as Anamika R. Rathore
Released: 2005
Colonel Suryaveer "Surya" Singh is a former army officer who has seen far too much killing and now sees a lot of booze bottles. Needing a job, he reluctantly agrees to be the bodyguard of a young Indian girl living in Thailand.
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GRADE
My Grade: A
Your Average Grade: A+
YOUR OPINIONS
DHolloway
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A+
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2018-01-18
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Excellent series. Highly recommended. In the books his first name is Marcus.
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