![]() Washington knows how to play a bad guy with a conscience and is almost incapable of delivering a bad performance. Reynolds is a good actor and does the struggling hero thing well, even if it’s still hard to distance him from his comedic persona. The performances are definitely strong across the board. The filmmakers get points for effort, but are a few years too late to qualify for originality or relevancy. It’s almost as familiar as an elaborate Bond villain deathtrap. ![]() Seeing a movie star get waterboarded in a blockbuster doesn’t feel subversive anymore. The problem is that these flicks are quickly becoming generic. In theory, that should lead to an action packed thriller with a brain, and I suppose in a certain sense that’s the case. Swedish director Daniel Espinosa ( Snabba Cash) tries to out shaky-cam Greengrass at his own game, staging elaborate shootouts, car chases, and fistfights with that special brand of hard-to-see verite styled intimacy. It’s all pretty simple espionage stuff filled with double agents, dirty secrets, sudden bursts of violence, and an underlying sense of post 9/11 government skepticism. ![]() The only problem is that now the inexperienced agent doesn’t know if he can trust his superiors with this sensitive information and his supposed enemy starts talking much more sense than the CIA. Within minutes a team of apparent terrorists show up to try and kill Frost, so Matt cuffs him and takes him on the run. He’s managed to get ahold of a microchip detailing all of the dirty dealings of American and British special agents on the take and that lands him in the safe house. Frost used to be a top agent, but became disgusted by the practices of the organization and went rogue, determined to uncover their corruption. A legendary ex-CIA agent Tobin Frost shows up in shackles, played by Denzel Washington in scenery-chewing mode. Then one day, it all goes to hell as tends to happen in these sorts of movies. He spends most of his time counting down the hours on the clock until he can hang out with his attractive French girlfriend. Ryan Reynolds plays Matt Weston, an unproven CIA agent whittling away his time in a dead end assignment monitoring a US safe house in Cape Town, South Africa. Decent or not, we’ve seen all this stuff before and it’s not quite as exciting anymore. Five years later, it feels a bit like dipping back into a well. The Bourne sequels grabbed onto current events and scandals and spun them into blockbuster action flicks. It’s a fairly entertaining movie, just one that definitely feels like it’s coming out a few years too late. Safe House falls firmly into this camp, loaded with nods to dirty dealings and water boarding. But ever since Paul Greengrass’ Bourne Identity sequels, these movies have been about terrorism and government cover-ups, set in third world countries and filmed with shaky handheld cameras and blown out colour schemes. ![]() What started as cold black and white post-war pictures of malaise turned into stylized widescreen glob-trotting romps. Espionage thrillers have gone through some weird metamorphoses over the years.
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