I thought I’d actually do something useful with this whole blog business, instead of just explaining why Facebook needs to have some sort of idiot cleansing and a discussion of why turtles are secretly fooling all of us, (more on that later) but nevertheless, seeing as I went to the cinema I thought I would do a little movie review.
Safe House is the movie in question, and looking at the cast, it looks like it could be a winner. The main character is Matthew Weston, played by Ryan ‘I’m allergic to my shirt’ Reynolds, Tobin Frost played by Denzel ‘easily in the top ten of the coolest dudes on the planet’ Washington. The movie itself is a straight up action, and by that I mean plenty of car chases, lots of people getting shot, more than enough fight scenes and TWO! Instances of guys lying on top of each other whilst trying to plunge a sharp object into the others chest, whilst the other desperately battles to push him in the opposite direction. So if you are a fan of movies that get the adrenaline going, then I will say from the off its worth seeing, it certainly made me jump about 3 or 4 times, and I am pretty sure the director did that on purpose because he hates cinema audiences.
The best thing about this film, is also the worst thing about it sadly; the plot. The actual storyline is quite innovative in my opinion, sure it has the old cliché of a guy who has betrayed his country and is now desperately pursued by secret agents, (one of whom is corrupt naturally), who want to have him silenced. That plotline has been used so often now, I’m beginning to think that all secret agents at some point have to betray their country in order to get that promotion that they have been gunning for, but it always goes to Anderson because he kisses the bosses arse. Anyway, I got a bit lost in whimsy there. The new derivation of this idea is pretty much what the title says. Ryan Reynolds plays a guy whose job it is, is to guard a secret ‘safe house,’ which is essentially a location where suspects are brought for interrogation away from the prying eyes of everyone but those involved in the case. Reynolds character has been house sitting this particular property for 12 months and is keen to actually do something other than sit on his arse all day and hook up with his hot French girlfriend (yes of course he has a hot French girlfriend, its Ryan freaking Reynolds). Naturally Denzel Washington, the aforementioned traitor, has to spoil things when he is brought to the safe house to be interrogated. It literally takes about 10 minutes before dudes with machines guns burst in to kill everyone including Frost; they don’t succeed though thanks to a panicky Weston, who manages to engineer an escape. The rest of the film follows Weston’s attempts to keep his prisoner safe and transport him to another safe house, whilst also trying to avoid those who were supposed to be helping him.
I will say this, the movie is pretty exciting and very fast paced, which sadly leads to its downfall. The problem is the plot is simply too big for the movie, I felt there was a lot more room for character development, even though it’s an action film, there was still wasn’t enough exploration of characters, such as Weston’s girlfriend played by Nora Arnezeder, who quite frankly may as well have not been there, she was clearly there just to make Reynolds character look more human compared to the cold hearted character of Tobin Frost. Also Brendan Gleeson is far too good an actor to have such a reduced role, although as good as he is, his American accent is terrible and he seemed to give up and just go back to Irish half way through. Overall the acting is pretty solid though, Washington rarely lets you down, and Reynolds is a lot better than someone who just spends most of his movies topless.
Overall then my response to this film was a bit meh, the acting was good, I thought the plot was a good idea, but the script was a bit thin and there were too many ‘action’ sequences which seemed to have just been edited in when there was nothing else to move the movie forward. Also I guessed who the bad guy was pretty much straight away, it wasn’t very well disguised at all. I hate giving number ratings, because they are always so arbitrary, but if I had to give it a rating out of 5 I’d go for 2.5/5
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