Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide

Finally... A flick that delivers the action goods
by Morgan P Salvo


I thought for sure that Safe House was another of those Tony Scott/ Denzel Washington collaborations and much to my chagrin its not. It is however Training Day all over again with a much cooler calmer Denzel. Instead of director Antoine Fuqua this time it’s Swedish director, with an equally exotic name, Daniel Espinosa known for Snabba Cash (Easy Money). This flick switches the hard driving streets of LA to the more intense safe houses throughout the city of Cape Town, South Africa.

CIA agent Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) is a low-level CIA "housekeeper" in charge of a safe house where suspects are taken by CIA operatives to be interrogated. Enter Tobin Frost (Washington), CIA agent-gone-rogue and the agency's most notorious traitor who mysteriously turns himself in…then the fun begins. When the safe house is attacked, Weston and Frost find themselves on the run pursued by trigger-happy gunmen.. Sound familiar? Within the confines of comparisons to the identity-and-loyalty-in-question Bourne movies and Salt, at least this flick has two action heroes and more gratuitous violence than you can shake a semi-automatic weapon at.
Having a decent beginning I thought the filmmakers were going to blow their wad early with the cat-and-mouse shadowing of Frost followed by an overt amount of gunplay. But that is followed up by one of the best car chases I’ve seen and the rest is nothing but a punch fest, shoot ’em up in all its action glory. The majority of Safe House doesn’t skimp on the punching, running, bullet spattering and dodging, hails of gunfire and thundering loud car smashes.

Worth mentioning is the spot-on editing, dizzying camera work and super stylized direction. Within a somber tone Espinosa maintains a visually coherent sense of time and space no matter how much pummeling there is. Cinematographer Oliver Wood must be praised highly here as his frenetic camera style never wanes and he is no slouch to the material. His cinematography credits include all three Bourne entries and a myriad of other action related flicks including Face/off and Sister Act 2 (Well okay we’re all not perfect). Editor Richard Pearson, whose credits include “The Bourne Supremacy, sews together some of the most cohesive sets of scenes in recent history.The use of grainy film and a lot of supreme close-ups adds to Safe House’s gritty feel.

Reynolds deserves recognition for being a consummate actor who can go seamlessly from smarmy comedic roles to down and dirty everyman roles. Here he expresses absolute believability as a man whose emotions go through the wringer getting yanked from every side against what’s right or wrong. Denzel on the other hand is so good at the epitome of cool, moody mystery and smoldering feeling that he keeps you nicely guessing throughout his world-weary cynical world view. The team playing the CIA home base agents are a bunch of actors (Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson, Sam Shepard) known for laying on the intense deep seriousness, playing overly grizzled and determined CIA agents. They all look dangerously unhealthy and I can’t tell if it’s them or the characters… probably both.

The problems I have with this flick are miniscule like is it impossible to write an original script without a CIA agent going rogue and how many necks need to be broken by that twisting head routine? There are excellent shit-coming-out-of-nowhere scenes that startle the crap out of you. It’s like what horror movies strive for but in their context it’s always too predictable. Its way more effective in the action genre when a car slams into another on or a bullet pierces a skull when we least expect it.
Out doing Salt, Fast and Furious and all the Bourne flicks put together, Safe House really delivers the goods. There’s a kind of “wish come true” Wiki leaks ending that I think many of us would like to see transpire in reality but for now we’ll stick with the high powered action. With whirlwind energy, high body count and performances that stay on the mark the last thing Safe House does is play it safe.


Safe House
Starring Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson, Sam Shepard
Directed by Daniel Espinosa
Rated R
3 ½ stars