Review No.85: Safe House

Some actors just seem to thrive playing villains in films and for me I believe Denzel Washington is one of those despite recently been seeing mainly playing heroes in The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 as well as in Unstoppable though for me his last great role was in American Gangster. In Safe House he plays Tobin Frost a former CIA agent who went rogue several years ago and is now living a life of crime so after being chased by some hoodlums he ends up seeking refuge at the US consulate in Cape Town. Also in Cape Town is Ryan Reynolds' Matt Weston who is in charge of a looking after the CIA safe house in which they keep criminals while they interrogate them but this is a thankless job which usually means he sits around for hours at a time doing nothing and he believes that he deserves a transfer desperately badgering Brendan Gleason's David Barlow for one. However Weston's life is turned upside down when Frost is bought to his safe house and during interrogation a number of criminals attempt to capture the wanted man only to be thwarted by Matt who takes Tobin on the run. This piques the interest of both Barlow and Vera Farmiga's officer Catherine Linklater who doesn't have as much trust in Weston as Gleason's character does especially when he shoots a cop at a football game while attempting to take Frost back into custody. The second half of the film is a cat-and-mouse game with Frost and Weston attempting to one-up each other however they are forced to join together against the men after the former as parts of why he went rogue in the first place are revealed. By the end of the film there are some twists, albeit predictable twists, and a couple of not so shocking deaths as a big revelation ends the film on what should be a high note.

As I said Washington is by and far the best thing about Safe House his Tobin Frost is captivating staying cool, calm and collected for the most part only pouncing when he seems a moment to escape. Washington seems to be having an absolute ball here for once not trying to protect a little girl or stop a train but simply attempting to get one over on both the cops as well as the robbers. Once seen as no more than a comedy guy for me Reynolds has carved out a new career playing the 'everyman' roles such as he did in the excellent Buried and his harassed, out-of-his-depth rookie CIA character bounces perfectly off Washington's Frost. There are also some excellent set pieces most notably the one at the football match in which Frost evades Weston for the first time while the South African locations add an exotic nature to proceedings making Safe House more interesting than it would've been had it been set in America. On the downside the script is all over the place though the action is the key to the film's success the plotting is heavy-handed and the majority of the characters' motives seem to change throughout. Gleason and especially Farmiga are both wasted in roles which only exist to provide exposition about the two central characters and their backgrounds. I also felt the constant edits in some of the action sequences fairly jarring especially a car chase towards the beginning of the film as well as the final shoot-out. Safe House then does have two likeable leads however I feel there are too many things wrong with it to be the truly pleasing brainless action film that it so desperately wants to be.

Verdict: Two great central performances and an exotic location save this film from being a bog-standard straight-to-DVD action flick I'm still going to mark this one quite harshly so I'll give it a high 5.5/10