Any notorious CIA turncoat, Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington) re-emerges being a hunted man in South Africa. He turns himself to the American Embassy, and is taken with a safe house operated by means of junior CIA agent Shiny Weston (Ryan Reynolds). Within moments of his or her arrival, the team guarding Frost is slaughtered in the surprise attack, and Weston is pushed to flee with Frost as his prisoner, with the directive to hold him alive for eighteen hours, at which time he’ll almost certainly be extracted from an additional safe house. But can Weston preserve the wiley Frost, who has an agenda of their own?
SAFE HOUSE has all the ingredients for a cracker-jack thriller. It has the awesome premise, a promising new director in the helm (Daniel Espinosa- director from the Swedish hit EASY FUNDS), and two big stars from the lead roles. Sure enough, the end result is a slick ride, with enough entertainment value to create it well worth the buying price of admission- but I couldn’t help but feel the film was strangely inert on occasion.
Maybe this has about the fact that, in a way, SAFE HOUSE is as well familiar. Firstly, it’s very reminiscent regarding TRAINING DAY, with Washington playing another veteran anti-hero, teamed with a noble younger guy- who gets taken around the ride of his lifestyle, although instead of the particular gang wars of South Central L. A, we get the cloak and dagger espionage tactics of the CIA- with most of South Africa being turned into a war zone for the two leads. It also owes a heck of any lot to 3: 10 TO YUMA (both the remake and the original) with the truth that the hero has to produce his unwilling, but charismatic captive towards authorities, while being hunted with a vast opposition.
Where SAFE HOUSE really goes wrong is in the two-hander aspect, with Denzel Washington absolutely making mincemeat of Jones Reynolds on-screen. Early on, we see Reynolds dishonoured a baseball against some sort of wall, which I suppose was likely to make us view your pet as Steve McQueen-ish figure, but that type connected with vibe really doesn’t match Reynolds, who’s maybe too “nice” for the role. Someone tougher, and perhaps older and even more threatening was needed for that part. I don’t buy the complete “babe-in-the-woods” act that we’re supposed to swallow here, as the guy is after all a CIA agent that’s using a safe house in Southern region Africa. Certainly he should be a little more formidable? Someone like Mark Wahlberg (or perhaps an outside-the-box casting notion like Oscar Issac or even Liev Schreiber) was actually needed here, and while Reynolds acquits himself nicely within the action scenes (of which there are many) every time the focus is shifted from Denzel and on to Reynolds, the film grinds to a halt- and I claim this as someone that truly likes Reynolds being an actor. It’s just miscasting.
Otherwise though, SAFE HOUSE is a considerable enough film, although it’s predictable because heck. After a while, the twists get higher than a little goofy (if one best places to take a shot when a character is put aside by a surprise off-screen gunshot by someone who’s just now being revealed as a traitor,
