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.

The Darkest Hour (2011)

Sometimes there is so much stupid packed into a movie that it's difficult to pinpoint exactly what happened to make it so bad. In much the same way that a construction worker stares thoughtfully at the collapsed building in front of him, one tries to spot mistakes and missteps along the way. Where did it all take a turn for the worst? Was it the plans? Was it the site? Was is the laborers? Was it the fact that he chose to make the support beams out of expired Kit Kat bars? Where did it all go wrong?

Such is the case with "The Darkest Hour." This film is one of those rare ones when it is difficult to comprehend how the thing even got a green light to begin with. It's just such an amazing mess that it is difficult to know where to start, but in the interest of keeping this brief, because believe me, I could rant about this for a long time, I shall simply state that there are few things worse than a bad movie being bad mostly because it has no original ideas or elements whatsoever.

It's so derivative of other films that it really has no identity of its own. The Aliens are invisible (not at all like "Predator"). They are invading because they want our resources (not at all like "Cowboys and Aliens"). Not only that, but we ourselves become resources (not at all like "War of The Worlds"). They also see us because our body signatures, which can be masked by ordinary means (not at all like "Tremors 2" or again, "Predator").

I'm also pretty sure they're ripping off "Ghostbusters," too. Those jerks.

The cast of characters is also so stock that it borders on offensive. Of course, this is on top of Emile Hirsch and the rest of them being annoying and obnoxious. And I hate to say they were all bad, because Olivia Thirlby is actually a decent actress, but she's just wasted talent here. It's sad to see her forced to do this crap. However, you can play a pretty fun drinking game with the characters. Every time a character does EXACTLY what they are supposed to do based on their cliched character idiom, take a shot. Example:

This guy.

From the moment he is introduced, we see that he is a douche (and his name is Skylar. Ugh). He is a rich dude who screws over the main characters in the beginning of the film. Let's hit play and do "THE DARKEST HOUR DRINKING GAME!" Just go ahead and call out the most cliched ways for this character to act, and when you're right, drink!

"When stuff goes down he's going to end up being a total coward."

15 minutes later - TAKE A SHOT.

"That cowardice is going to cause someone to die."

30 seconds later - TAKE A SHOT.

"Well, now they're going to end up being stuck with him."

5 minutes later - TAKE A SHOT.

"He going to complain and talk about how they're all going to die at every possible opportunity, isn't he?"

Every 2 minutes and/or every time he says "DON'T YOU GET IT?!" - TAKE A SHOT.

"He's going to find a gun at some point and do something really stupid."

TAKE A SHOT.

"Against all odds and reason, the main characters are going to try and save his dumb ass."

TAKE A SHOT.

"And as a direct consequence of his stupidity, one of the more useful characters is going to die, right?"

Oh? No shot? Ok. I was getting a little sick anyways, I'm glad there's at least one stupid cliche they didn't -

AW CRAP. They transferred that cliche over to the only character more useless than him! TAKE A SHOT.

I don't feel so good...

So yeah, "The Darkest Hour" is one big walking cliche. That's about the only significant thing about it. And while being derivative doesn't automatically make a movie bad, it needs to doing something worthwhile with it. But it's not just that the film is unoriginal, it's that it is so uninterested in doing anything that's NOT cliched that it comes off as excruciatingly boring.

And there is one last really big problem with "The Darkest Hour" that observant viewers of the trailer might have been able to spot fairly quickly: The aliens are invisible.

Well ok, that isn't entirely accurate. The have a cloaking device or some stupid thing going on. Also adding to their arsenal is their vision. I mentioned before that the film steals from both "Predator" and "Tremors 2," and it's not too far off. The aliens can see what I guess is supposed to be the electrical impulses firing through your body. However, like the movies they steal from, there is a catch. And in this movie the catch is that they can't see through glass. And yes, it plays out just as stupid as it sounds. And no, the characters never really do anything with that knowledge. And yes, the movie does forget its own rules with that ALL THE TIME.

I suppose that the whole point of making the bad guys invisible was to make it scary, because you never knew where they were (even though you kind of did). But there were too many instances when the menace of the bad guys was pretty well and truly diminished. For instance, I'm pretty sure they can't hear. Like at all. They have to be stone deaf. Either that, or they are incredibly stupid and not worthy of our fear.

One scene, in particular, fully encapsulated how dumb this movie was for me. The particular scene I am referencing has to do with two of the main characters trapped behind a car while one of the aliens comes over to check them out. Emile Hirsch, making no effort to keep his location a secret, starts screaming to the others to run. I'm thinking to myself "Good job, Chuckles, now there's no possible way they won't find and kill your annoying ass."

Nope. It moves towards them menacingly, true enough, but they slide underneath the car as it goes over the roof. And for some reason this shields them from the aliens sight...even though there is no glass covering them. Keep in mind, we are given absolutely zero other materials which are proven to block their sight. It just changes sometimes. So, despite seeing Emile Hirsch just seconds prior, the alien has a convenient flare-up of Alzheimers and just keeps on trucking, even though Emile was just yelling his head off on top of everything else. And it didn't even go after the other characters that were in plain sight beforehand.

So that leaves us with two possibilities: either the aliens are titanically stupid and not worth getting scared over, or they are deaf on top of being randomly blind.

I'm starting to think The Goonies could handle this situation, guys.

But really? Invisible bad guys? We're actually going there? How cheap are these people who made this thing? Is this "The Happening" all of a sudden? Actually, come to think of it, I WISH I was watching "The Happening" right now. That movie is a comedic masterpiece right up there with "The Room" and "Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus." Any one of those movies has more going for it than "The Darkest Hour."


I mean, in "The Happening" we get to see the classic scene where Mark Wahlberg tries negotiating with a plastic plant. "Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus" has a shark eating a 747. And "The Room" needs no explaining. It's "The Room." It's quite possibly the most awesomely bad movie ever made. How can anyone forget football in tuxedos or the riveting saga of the Chris-R/Denny drug scandal or whatever that thing living in Lisa's neck was? Those scenes stick with you, man. "The Darkest Hour" has nothing in it that you will remember 2 days after seeing it. And I would watch epically bad over bland and forgettable ANY DAY.

This man is more entertaining than you are, Emile Hirsch.

THE BOTTOM LINE - Terrible and derivative to the point of being insulting. Not even "so bad it's entertaining." It's just teen wanna-be thriller schlock. Skip it.