Safe House (2012) directed by Daniel Espinosa
Serious question. Why are you bringing your infant child to a theatre with loud noises at 11:00 PM? There was not one but two babies in the theatre serenading the audience with their majestic cries, providing the surround sound experience of a maternity ward. On top of that, the guy sitting behind me was snoring and randomly kicking my chair in his slumber. And my popcorn was a little stale and my Coke Zero flat. It was one of the more unpleasant movie going experiences I've had in a while, not to mention that the movie itself was pretty mediocre.
Safe House is a messy action flick that leans heavily on its energy and constant movement but unfortunately never leads anywhere we haven't been before. It does feature the ever awesome Denzel Washington and heart throb Ryan Reynolds as the leads, but there is only so much of Training Day and American Gangster that Washington can put into this role without it feeling generic. Washington plays Tobin Frost, a renegade ex-CIA master agent who has suddenly reappeared in South Africa after a decade off the grid. He is being hunted down by some bad guys after acquiring a mysterious computer file. Running out of places to turn to as bullets wiz by, he turns himself into the American consulate where he is immediately arrested and taken into a CIA safe house. The safe house is overseen by a rookie operative, Matt Weston (Reynolds), who has been begging for some action. Well action just came your way kiddo! The bad guys attack the safe house and Matt and Frost escape. The two must work together to run from the bad guys and figure out their next move. Frost won't make it easy on Matt of course since he is his prisoner but the two frenemies make a dynamic pair.
Director Daniel Espinosa would have been better served to slow things down a bit and let scenes breathe rather than shoot the movie like a music video. The action is too quickly cut and shot too close in making it difficult to figure out what is going on. It is the standard quick editing technique that is basically lazy direction. You can mask a weakly choreographed action sequence by getting in close and doing these quick cuts making the action seem more intense than it is, but what ends up happening is that it is nearly impossible to figure out what is going on. You can't tell where characters are in relationship to each other or their surroundings and the action itself becomes meaningless because you can't see any of it. Compare this to the action scenes in Haywire where Soderbergh shoots his fight sequences in medium shots with minimal cuts allowing us to get a full glimpse of all the action. I'm not sure what the relationship is between cinematographers and editors are, but Oliver Wood (cinematographer) was responsible for the last two Bourne movies which I loved, but you could hardly see any of his work here when the shots are chopped up into a million bits and pieces.
Finally the movie itself is kind of generic with standard plot holes and predictable moments. This is a standard popcorn action picture that to be honest I'm not too upset over. I just wish it was a little better done because it is somewhat entertaining and who doesn't like Denzel?
Grade: C+
SPOILER NOTES:
There is a scene in a soccer stadium where Frost is attempting to escape from Matt. Matt yells out to him, "Frost! Frost! Frost!" Does he honestly expect him to turn around and wait for him? Why doesn't he keep his element of surprise and chase after him or something. All the meanwhile Matt draws attention to himself where the stadium security pulls out his gun and open fires into a crowd. LOL, there's no way anyone would ever do that.
There is an obvious (at least to me) double crosser in the movie and it is between either Branden Gleeson or Vera Farmiga. I thought it was Gleeson's character all along because he has a personal relationship with Matt, thus creating a more dramatic heel turn. It actually doesn't really matter though because we barely know anything about these characters so we don't really care if one suddenly turns, though that is also why it's obviously Gleeson since we know more about him.
Serious question. Why are you bringing your infant child to a theatre with loud noises at 11:00 PM? There was not one but two babies in the theatre serenading the audience with their majestic cries, providing the surround sound experience of a maternity ward. On top of that, the guy sitting behind me was snoring and randomly kicking my chair in his slumber. And my popcorn was a little stale and my Coke Zero flat. It was one of the more unpleasant movie going experiences I've had in a while, not to mention that the movie itself was pretty mediocre.
Safe House is a messy action flick that leans heavily on its energy and constant movement but unfortunately never leads anywhere we haven't been before. It does feature the ever awesome Denzel Washington and heart throb Ryan Reynolds as the leads, but there is only so much of Training Day and American Gangster that Washington can put into this role without it feeling generic. Washington plays Tobin Frost, a renegade ex-CIA master agent who has suddenly reappeared in South Africa after a decade off the grid. He is being hunted down by some bad guys after acquiring a mysterious computer file. Running out of places to turn to as bullets wiz by, he turns himself into the American consulate where he is immediately arrested and taken into a CIA safe house. The safe house is overseen by a rookie operative, Matt Weston (Reynolds), who has been begging for some action. Well action just came your way kiddo! The bad guys attack the safe house and Matt and Frost escape. The two must work together to run from the bad guys and figure out their next move. Frost won't make it easy on Matt of course since he is his prisoner but the two frenemies make a dynamic pair.
Director Daniel Espinosa would have been better served to slow things down a bit and let scenes breathe rather than shoot the movie like a music video. The action is too quickly cut and shot too close in making it difficult to figure out what is going on. It is the standard quick editing technique that is basically lazy direction. You can mask a weakly choreographed action sequence by getting in close and doing these quick cuts making the action seem more intense than it is, but what ends up happening is that it is nearly impossible to figure out what is going on. You can't tell where characters are in relationship to each other or their surroundings and the action itself becomes meaningless because you can't see any of it. Compare this to the action scenes in Haywire where Soderbergh shoots his fight sequences in medium shots with minimal cuts allowing us to get a full glimpse of all the action. I'm not sure what the relationship is between cinematographers and editors are, but Oliver Wood (cinematographer) was responsible for the last two Bourne movies which I loved, but you could hardly see any of his work here when the shots are chopped up into a million bits and pieces.
Finally the movie itself is kind of generic with standard plot holes and predictable moments. This is a standard popcorn action picture that to be honest I'm not too upset over. I just wish it was a little better done because it is somewhat entertaining and who doesn't like Denzel?
Grade: C+
SPOILER NOTES:
There is a scene in a soccer stadium where Frost is attempting to escape from Matt. Matt yells out to him, "Frost! Frost! Frost!" Does he honestly expect him to turn around and wait for him? Why doesn't he keep his element of surprise and chase after him or something. All the meanwhile Matt draws attention to himself where the stadium security pulls out his gun and open fires into a crowd. LOL, there's no way anyone would ever do that.
There is an obvious (at least to me) double crosser in the movie and it is between either Branden Gleeson or Vera Farmiga. I thought it was Gleeson's character all along because he has a personal relationship with Matt, thus creating a more dramatic heel turn. It actually doesn't really matter though because we barely know anything about these characters so we don't really care if one suddenly turns, though that is also why it's obviously Gleeson since we know more about him.
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