Safe House

Finally, a January release!  While this looks and acts like a Bourne film, make no mistake: it is a Denzel Washington action film with a surprising performance by Definitely, Maybe’sRyan Reynolds.  As good as Washington is, they waited to release it until 2012 so they never figured this was another Training Day for the now mid-50s acting icon.  But it is a two-hour-long thrill ride.

Safe House (Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Brendan Gleeson, Vera Farmiga, Sam Shepard) – I have seen every Denzel movie made though I admit I couldn’t make it all the way through the almost unwatchable Virtuosity.  Safe House allows Washington to show off his considerable talent as Tobin Frost, a legendary former CIA agent who went rogue years ago and is now sharing secrets with the bad guys.  As the movie opens, we see him making a deal for some kind of a computer file that he injects into his body just below the skin.  And then suddenly, all hell breaks loose.  And that doesn’t end for almost two hours.

 

The movie is set in Capetown, South Africa, where a band of terrorist types come after him.  As they are about to get him, he ducks into the American consulate, the closest port in his person storm.  Here, he assumes the “cool agent” persona that dominates the film even during water-boarding that takes place in a “safe house” where they are trying to debrief him.  There, he meets a new, young spy, Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds playing way against type), practically right out of the spy “Farm” where agents are trained and tested (for more on this, watch The Recruit with Al Pacino, Colin Farrell, and Bridget Moynihan).

 

The guys chasing Frost storm the safe house and, having to think fast, Weston gets Frost the heck out of there.  The rest of the movie is about their adventures to avoid the bad guys (or, I suppose, the worse guys).  Of course, there are twists and turns, lots of gunfire, some horrendous fake bloody deaths, and general mayhem.

 

Back at CIA headquarters at Langley, the trio of Deputy Director Harlan Whitford (Sam Shepard) and case officers David Barlow (Brendan Gleeson) and Catherine Linklater (Vera Farmiga) are trying to figure everything out and to get Frost.  Why has he come in from the cold?  What is he after?  Can Weston handle the most notorious and dangerous agent of them all?  Has Weston turned?  Will Frost give up his secrets?

 

Between shoot-outs, chase sequences, and gun battles, Weston and Frost develop a strong, if tenuous relationship with Frost becoming the teacher.  Among the lessons, “eventually, everyone betrays everyone.”  Weston becomes a lethal killing machine (after all, he scored “lights out” at the Farm), and he realizes he may be in even more danger than he thinks.  Reynolds is surprisingly good as the innocent-agent-turned-fighter (who would have believed this romantic comedy star could turn into Matt Damon?).

 

Safe House is really just another Bourne movie (incidentally, the Bourne Legacy starring Jeremy Renner will be out in the Spring) with a dose of Green Zone (where Brendan Gleeson played a spy from MI-6) and Training Day (Denzel won an Oscar playing a formerly good cop-turned-bad cop).  There is little new to the plot but it is a mile-a-minute, music pounding, bullets flying spy thriller that will keep you interested if not mesmerized.

 

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