- Rated R
- Thriller
- 2012
- Buy the BD
All photos © Universal Pictures
Reviewed by David Medsker
()
afe House” is the kind of movie that will sport pull quotes from critics like “Non-stop action,” “A relentless thrill ride,” and “A high-octane thriller.” And technically, all of those statements are true. Unfortunately, it’s not enough; despite the best efforts of its two lead actors, the story isn’t a story so much as a series of preludes to a fight scene. That Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds are able to make the movie so watchable is to their immense credit.
CIA operative Matt Weston (Reynolds) has taken a “housekeeper” position at a safe house in Cape Town. He is bored out of his mind, but his superior David Barlow (Brendon Gleeson) is not ready to promote him. On the other side of town, a former CIA operative-turned enemy of the state named Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington) turns himself in to the US Consulate, but only because he was surrounded on all sides by people who wanted him dead. Frost is moved to Weston’s safe house for “questioning” (read: torture), and the facility is almost immediately besieged by the same thugs who tried to kill Frost earlier. Frost knows that this is an inside job, but Weston wants to prove his worth to his commanding officers, and refuses to let Frost go. The two survive the attack, but due to their remote location on the globe, it will take almost 24 hours to get Weston any backup, so he is ordered to lie low. As events unfold, though, Weston starts to realize that Frost may not be the baddest bad guy in this fight after all.
Washington is remarkably low-key here, rarely raising his voice and exerting the bare minimum of energy in order to achieve his goals. It’s an interesting choice, given the high-powered nature of the film, but it’s absolutely the right call. Reynolds, wisely, follows suit, and together they form one stoic ass-kicking duo. Vera Farmiga is underused as CIA Agent Linklater (hence her lack of a mention in the plot summary paragraph above) and Gleeson has definitely had better roles than this. Robert Patrick and Ruben Blades make glorified cameos as well, but the main thrust of the movie is Denzel and Ryan vs. nameless bad guys with weapons.
Those scenes of Washington and Reynolds taking on the bad guys with weapons are thrilling, though, a well-balanced combination of shootouts and hand-to-hand combat. Best of all, they’re somewhat grounded in reality; when Frost is running across rooftops in a shanty town (think “District 9”), not all of the roofs hold his weight. Daniel Espinosa, making his American debut, spills a fair amount of blood but isn’t fetishistic about it; indeed, most of the kill shots are done off screen. He did, though, exhibit some symptoms of Paul Greengrass Syndrome during the longer takes. Note to aspiring young filmmakers out there: it’s all right to keep the camera in one place when the audience is supposed to focus on a certain part of the screen. Really, it is.
For as many things as “Safe House” gets right, it sure would have been nice if they had given the characters a better reason to jump through all of these hoops. The story is more interested in the battle than the war, and because of that, it loses the fight that matters the most.
Two-Disc Blu-ray Review:
The bonus features to "Safe House" are plentiful, but awfully technical. There are several featurettes about the hand-to-hand combat, the ambush on the safe house, the city of Cape Town, the former CIA employees who contributed, and everyone is clearly very smart and very experienced, but the bits aren't terribly fun to watch. Worse, there are no deleted scenes or audio commentaries. What they provide here is informative, but it doesn't have a whole lot of mass appeal.
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