Sometimes filmmakers believe their audiences are dumber than they actually are. In the case of “Man on Fire,” a filmmaker goes to great lengths to make sure audience members leave dumber than when they came.

-Director Tony Scott seemed to be heading to this point. Each of his films has employed more and more post-production effects. For example, “Top Gun,” one of Scott’s first films, was brilliant in the sense that it let its cinematography and actors carry the movie, making us quickly forget a weak plot and predictable outcome.

Scott would go on to make more films, each becoming more and more flashy. “Enemy of the State” was quite a visual effort, but Will Smith and Gene Hackman were allowed to carry the film. Scott gave them room to flex their range. “Spy Game” seemed to rely more on the visuals than its stars. And now we have “Man on Fire,” the visual climax in Scott’s career. It’s an explosion of excess — a headache-inducing nightmare of a film.

I sat there wondering to myself, when you have perhaps two of the greatest actors alive in your picture, why not let the audience look at them for a moment? The great thing about great actors is they can take a weak script and turn it into something watchable, and sometimes it’s even great — if you let them do it. When Scott finally gets it and lets Christopher Walken deliver one of his best-ever monologues, I thought things were turning around. Then Scott takes the momentum back, as if to tell us that this is his film, not Walken’s.

What Scott chooses to do in “Man on Fire” is keep everything moving. This film never stops — literally never stops. When two characters are sitting and quietly conversing, the camera tracks around them. It’s as if things are spinning out of control. The only problem is the script and/or plot does not support such movement.

Scott also piles on the visual effects and fancy transitions, as if he’s making up for something that simply is not there. This is strange because the script for “Man on Fire” is provided by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Brian Helgeland. As a writer, Helgeland is generally one of the better ones. But for every “Mystic River” or “L.A. Confidential” on his resume, there’s “The Order” or “The Postman” to go along with it. “Man on Fire” definitely will fall into the latter category.

The story is rather simple. A former bodyguard called Creasy is haunted by his past. He is thrown into a new job, protecting a young girl named Pita from a rich family in Mexico City. Creasy, now a self-proclaimed alcoholic, finds a new way through the eyes of the little girl. She makes him want to turn his life around, but this is easier said than done.

What happens next is far too predictable. We know Pita will be abducted; we just don’t know when. And when we learn of a character’s death, we know he or she will be found alive; we just don’t know how. The “how” is the secret in most of these films, and “Man on Fire” takes much too long to get there and doesn’t reward us for waiting. Scott waits only 15 minutes to take Rebecca Romijn-Stamos’ clothes off, but we wait 45 minutes for the formulaic plot to get moving.

Such a weakness is why Scott feels the need to pile on effect after effect. Maybe he thinks making an audience sick will distract it from the plot holes, or maybe he thinks MTV and his previous works have conditioned us enough to believe such techniques are “in” and “cool.”

“Man on Fire” is proof no amount of fancy tricks can distract an audience from a predictable formula. Actors such as Denzel Washington and Christopher Walken have the talent and ability to distract. Too bad Scott didn’t let them.