MOVIE REVIEW: SAFE HOUSE...

SAFE HOUSE, (2012), produced by Intrepid Pictures, Moonlighting Pictures, Relativity Media, directed by Daniel Espinosa, written by David Guggenheim, starring Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Robert Patrick, Vera Faminga, Brenden Gleeson, Sam Shepard and Ruben Blades.  Rated 'R' for strong violence and some language.  Run time of 115 minutes.

Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington) is a CIA traitor and turncoat who is being hunted vigorously by a team of  killer mercenaries in South Africa.  As they close for the kill, he turns himself in at the American consulate.  Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) is the 'housekeeper' of a CIA SAFE HOUSE in the same city.  He soon has Tobin as a 'house-guest'.

Once these facts are established the film becomes yet another knock-off of a Bourne film in that the action is non-stop because Tobin is an agent or former agent as the case-may-be and the dialog mumbled and indistinct.  He is a man who knows too much and everybody, but his 'housekeeper' is trying to kill him.  Of course, it's not a spoiler to say this is yet another conspiracy movie where the bad guys are, to paraphrase Pogo, 'US'.

Sigh.  I was really, really, really hoping for some originality when I first saw the trailer, but NO!  It's another CIA/Spy Agency corruption film.  Only in this case we really aren't given a lot of background on what's happened in detail.  No, strike that, the film could have explained it but I couldn't make it out from the mumbled and whispered conversations that were the soundtrack.  (Am I really that deaf?)  Nor are we even given a good reason for Tobin's alleged betrayal or his reasons for concealing 'The File' that everyone wants and is willing to kill everyone else in sight to get possession of same.

Good points with the film are the way it started and the plot points that deals with the physical properties of actually maintaining a 'Safe House' and its procedures.  Whether close to reality or not, it was a good way to suck the viewer into the premise, but by the end of the first act, it was apparent this was yet another 'bad government/corrupt official' movie featuring a version of the somewhat unlikely Don Quixote-style hero only now with 'Bourne' style action sequences and plenty of gun play involving Sig pistols, the South African knock-off of the Beretta 92,  one Glock and various AR and AK derivatives as well as the occasional MP5.  The vehicle chase scenes defy reality or description so I'll make no further comment on that nonsensical aspect of this malarky.

Overall, I generally like Denzel Washington films, (DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS remains one of my all time favorites) and he and co-star Reynolds work well together on screen, but this film was a let-down in so many other aspects that at the very end it simply 'sank' as it turned into yet another predictable, cliche ridden, piece of formula format crap.

I was expecting something original and instead at the end all I saw was the usual pre-packaged bologna.

I give SAFE HOUSE 3 bullets out of a cylinder of 6...

All The Best,
Frank W. James