Safe House - Movie Review

Who's in it? 

Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Brendan Gleeson and Sam Shepard

What's it About? 

Weston (Reynolds) is an ambitious rookie CIA Agent that has spent the last 12 months guarding an empty safe house in Capetown, South Africa. Notorious rogue agent Tobin Frost (Washington) hands himself into the American Consulate and is subsequently brought to Weston's post, which turns out to be not so safe, quite the opposite in fact. They must escape, bide their time and struggle to stay alive until a new safe house can be located.

Any Good? 

Shot, I'm assuming, through some variation of an instagram lens, Safe House is gritty to say the least. Both Washington and Reynolds work in perfect tandem, Washington with his calm, cool demeanour playing the bad/good guy and Reynolds charm and expressive performance as an over eager rookie wanting to prove his worth. They're locked in a battle of wits and guns both with each other and their relentless pursuers, who never seem more than two heartbeats behind. 

Explosive stunts and action sequences are never completely over the top but are well executed and enough to keep up the thundering pace right through the 115 minutes, even if the plot isn't. While the story line is more than a little clichéd the guns, hand to hand combat and flagrant disregard for road safety is consistently fresh. Camera work leaned toward the shaky and in yo' face variety, I'm guessing to add a rawness to the story. 

Poor Ryan spent the entire movie like my fave kind of sausage. Battered. 

The cast in this movie is particularly brilliant, seeing our own Brendan Gleeson and Liam Cunningham getting an outing, it's just a shame that their roles or script never really allowed them to shine to their full ability. 

One disappointment was the formulaic closing scenes. How often do we see someone we know well, somewhere they shouldn't be and only react with a wry smile instead of this? Just doesn't happen. Then again neither does 80% of what happened in Safe House. 

Because of the calibre of stunts and action on show here I'm going to recommend you give it a looksee on the big screen, be warned though, do not attempt to drink water mid scene, I almost lost my two front teeth with a jump. That good. 

Rating: