Safe House (2012)

It's not that I don't like Denzel Washington, necessarily. I just don't care. I know that he's a national treasure, and that's fine. I can't say the man isn't good at his profession. What gets me is the obsession some people have with him. Nearly every time a Denzel Washington movie comes out and I say "Meh. I'll see it when it's available to rent. I guess. Maybe." there are people who look at me, mouth agape and tell me that "Well, it's going to be awesome. It's Denzel."

Really? That's your criteria for a movie being awesome? Just the fact that he's in it? Are you that much of a slave to his freakishly symmetrical good looks? I know that I'm the last person who should criticize somebody else for fanboying out over an actor. I mean, I'd fly to the north pole if it meant seeing a new Schwarzenegger flick, and even if it turned out to be bad, I'm still watching Arnie and it's all good. So trust me when I say I understand.

But really? Denzel? I honestly find him fairly dull to watch, mostly because to me I can never look at him and not see a guy acting his ass off. He's never seemed naturalistic to me, because he's always got this intense, concentrated look on his face like he's always thinking "Yes. YES. I'm going to act the HELL out of this role! Now where's my next line where I half-whisper very threateningly, look up towards the camera with my head down, shake my head and pout my lips?"

You know the expression I mean. This one. Yeah, that's the one.

I mean, sure, if one were to compare Arnold and Denzel, objectively it's no contest: Denzel is the better "actor." But in terms of action films, Arnold is FAR more entertaining and charismatic. For that reason, when I see yet another Denzel action flick, I just sit back and think "Why, dude? It's just not in your wheelhouse. You are an "actor." Not an action hero."

For that reason I wasn't exactly overjoyed about the prospect of seeing "Safe House." Like I said, Denzel is a good actor but I just can't buy him as a bad-ass action star. Never have, never will, and honestly, I'm kind of tired of him. At least in this movie he's essentially a bad guy instead of just another "mad dad with a gun." Also, when he's acting across from Ryan Reynolds, another actor I'm not overly fond of, you can't blame me for being a tad apprehensive.

After seeing "Safe House," I can actually say that I did enjoy myself somewhat. It was a decently entertaining film that held my interest, and in a rare change of pace for an espionage/government thriller film, the plot was also not horribly difficult to follow. I guess after something like "The Bourne Legacy" however, most anything would be easy to digest in comparison. I guess at this point I just go into these films expecting to not have the faintest notion what in the blue hell anyone is talking about.

I like to imagine that Denzel is simply making him pay for "The Green Lantern."

The plot is that Ryan Reynolds is a government agent who runs a safe house in South Africa. Denzel is a notorious traitor who used to work for the CIA before he sold a bunch of secrets to the enemy. Through reasons of having no other choice, Denzel turns himself in to the American embassy in South Africa. Once in custody, he is taken to the safe house that Reynolds is running by Robert Patrick in a cameo that was nice to see. Unfortunately for him, however, he's not in the movie long because after the arrival at the safe house, the people who were after Denzel earlier attack, forcing Reynolds to escape with him and try to make it to safety.

Despite the fact that the bad guys are kind of anonymous ethnic types without much identity, "Safe House" does manage to keep the action both exciting and fairly constant. Once it hits the ground running it really doesn't let up much until the end, so even if sometimes you're not quite sure who it is that's chasing our hero, it's still manages to engross the viewer in what's going on. Cars go really fast, guns are fired, Bourne-fu happens, it's a pretty fun time.

Where it started to lose me a bit was whenever there was exposition going on, especially from Denzel. And it wasn't what he was saying, but more the way he was saying it that was the problem for me. Now, this is another issue I have with him: he mumbles. Not all the time, but sometimes when he's going for intensity, he gets really quiet, but in doing so doesn't enunciate clearly. There were entire scenes that I had to rewind and throw the subtitles on for because it was clearly important stuff to know, like why he betrayed his country in the first place, but I had no earthly idea what he was saying.

I'm going to go Bill Maher here and issue a New Rule: Never write a scene devoted entirely to exposition in which the characters talking aren't allow to speak above the decimal volume of a mouse fart.

"It doesn't matter what you say when you look like this."

But in the end, I must fess up to having a decently good time with "Safe House." Even though the ending got a bit confusing because since this is a government espionage movie, there's got to be someone on the inside who's gone bad for poorly defined reasons. And yeah, it's stupid when you find out who the traitor is, and no it doesn't make much sense, and yes the final ending is actually pretty lame. But that's only the last 15 minutes of an otherwise decently solid 2 hour block of time.

THE BOTTOM LINE - While "Safe House" didn't exactly rock my world, it was better than I was anticipating. I would probably rather watch "Green Zone" or "Body of Lies" again before watching this, but it ended up being a fairly decent thriller. But I'm still not a big fan of Denzel or Ryan Reynolds. Recommended if you've got nothing better to do.