'Safe House' a ho-hum adventure thriller
Reviewer's Rating: ★★
Riding the same middle-aged leading man action train that Liam Neeson’s been aboard of late, Denzel Washington returns in Safe House, a brutal, bloody action picture that follows a familiar corruption-in-high places theme.
In the eyes of his former employer, the CIA, Washington’s Tobin Frost is an ex-agent gone rogue. Before turning bad and selling secrets to America’s enemies, Frost achieved legendary status at the agency. He was a superstar who accomplished audacious feats of espionage.
Ryan Reynolds co-stars in Safe House as Matt Weston, a rookie agent stationed at a usually sleepy CIA post in Cape Town, South Africa. He’s housekeeper at a safe house, a place traditionally used by intelligence agencies and clandestine organizations to hide or shelter their agents.
Weston has a beautiful French girlfriend in Cape Town. Ana (Nora Arnezeder) knows nothing of his true occupation. He desperately wants to follow her back to Paris when her South African medical residency is up.
As happy as Weston is with Ana, he’s thoroughly bored and unhappy at the safe house. His job appears to be just as glamorous and exciting as his housekeeper title. Usually, there’s nothing going on and, as far as he can tell, it’s a dead end.
Weston awakens abruptly from boredom when a CIA extraction team hauls Frost into the safe house. Inexplicably, Frost voluntary turned himself in at the U.S. consulate in Cape Town. Back at CIA headquarters in northern Virginia, agency brass are abuzz with the news.
A strong supporting cast plays the CIA’s leading players on the Frost case: Vera Farmiga is the coolly brittle Branch Chief Catherine Linklater; Brendan Gleeson co-stars as the comparatively humanistic Case Officer David Barlow; and Sam Shepherd is the crusty Deputy Director of Operations Harlan Whitford.
The wily, smiling Frost plays mind games with his naïve young housekeeper. Frost knows the territory, the business and the games of espionage only too well. Washington, who’s also one of the movie’s executive producers, easily slips into the rogue agent’s skin. Reynolds works, too, as a guy of modest talent and resourcefulness who is way over his head.
Frost arrives at Weston’s safe house but doesn’t stay long. A gang of ruthless pursuers with big guns trailed the CIA extraction team from the U.S. consulate. They easily breach the supposedly secret, secure facility. The thugs’ pursuit of Frost yields intense action, including frenetic cars chases and frequent gun battles. A surplus of extended, average-at-best action sequences undermines the film’s character and story development.
The drama back at CIA headquarters about whether or not Weston has turned rogue loses impact because the audience knows full well he’s just a good kid trying to make it.
The script does a better job of slowly unveiling the facts behind Frost, all of which are slyly masked by Washington’s cocky superspy.
Noisily though Safe House proceeds to its pedestrian plot destination, the film’s muted payoff underwhelms. A visit to this house is easily forgotten.