CARBON COPY: a review of "Safe House"

“SAFE HOUSE”

Screenplay Written by David Guggenheim

Directed by Daniel Espinosa

* ½ (one and a half stars)

Dear readers, I am beginning to worry about Denzel Washington.

Allow me to clarify. My worries are not in the least referring to Denzel Washington’s actual level of talent and skill as I firmly believe he is one of our greatest acting treasures. My statement is also not related to his box office clout, as he is still one of the few actors who remains able, despite his advancing age in Hollywood, to open a film just based upon his sheer presence. When I say that I am worried about Denzel Washington, what I am referring to are his acting choices and the possibility that he has reached a stage where he may be beginning to coast on his unquestionable legend.

To offer some comparison, I would like for you to look at the career of someone like Robert De Niro. His cinematic legend will always remain solid and unshakable due to his landmark performances in films like Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather Part II” (1974), Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” (1976), “Raging Bull” (1980), “The King Of Comedy” (1983), and “Goodfellas” (1990), for example. But as of late, it seems as if DeNiro level of quality control has flown out of the window, as he seems to have forgotten the ability to simply say “No.” Even worse is someone like Nicholas Cage, once one of our riskiest and most thrilling actors but has also in recent years has seemingly become incapable of appearing in films that are remotely watchable let alone good. In both cases of De Niro and Cage, the scent of money is very present and it just makes me sad to see these two immensely talented people take one paycheck movie after another. What is I fear for Denzel Washington is similar as the quality of at least four of his most recent films have been increasingly underwhelming artistically but have produced hefty box office dollars. I worry that Denzel Washington is becoming artistically lazy.

That feeling rose right to the surface once again as I viewed Director Daniel Espinosa’s action thriller “Safe House,” which pits criminal mastermind Washington against Ryan Reynolds’ green CIA agent. When this film was released early this year, it was yet another box office smash for Washington but as I watched, the movie itself just felt to be the same type of loud, bombastic, overblown yet profoundly under thought copycat, carbon copy experience that Hollywood releases every few weeks during the calendar year. Who knows why Washington is attaching himself to these projects that truly fall far below his skills and abilities. Yes, I can completely understand if he would like to simply have some fun and not wrestle and wrench himself for every acting role he takes. But for an actor, who, in my humble opinion, should have received FIVE Oscar awards for is performance in Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X" (1992) alone, I just think that he, and therefore, we the audience, deserve much better.

Set in Cape Town, South Africa, “Safe House’ introduces us to the legendary and infamous rogue CIA agent and now international criminal Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington), who is attacked by a band of mercenaries and surrenders himself to the American consulate after acquiring a mysterious computer file. Frost is quickly taken to a CIA safe house where very the low-level agent Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) serves as “housekeeper.” After being unsuccessfully interrogated and water boarded by a team of CIA agents, the safe house is infiltrated by the same team of mercenaries who attacked Frost earlier. While the CIA agents are slaughtered by the mercenaries, Weston reluctantly releases the uncomfortably cool and cunning Frost and the twosome escape.

The remainder of “Safe House” becomes a chase film filled with conspiracies, double crosses, revealed identities and hidden motives, flying bullets, epic car chases and crashes, escapes, reunions. And all the while, Weston desperately tries to stay one-step ahead of the enigmatically brilliant Tobin Frost, while also holding onto his integrity and innocence in an increasingly dark and ethically murky world.

   

Where “Safe House” could have and should have been an intricately designed and executed pulse pounder fueled by terrific performances, what we actually end up with is an unfortunately  ho-hum, pedestrian, assembly line feature filled to the very top with stock characters, clichéd dialogue, unimaginative action sequences and beyond obvious villains and duplicities. It is yet another Hollywood features that offers an immense amount of sound and fury but the result is tiresome and surprisingly boring.

“Safe House” is essentially nothing more a mishmash. It is a film made from the spare parts of other, and in some cases, better films from Antoine Fuqua’s “Training Day” (2001), a number of Tony Scott’s films, a dash of Hannibal Lecter here and a walloping amount of the Jason Bourne films there. Now, this would be all fine and dandy if Espinosa had made any conceivable attempt to ensure that “Safe House” became a fresh and invigorating experience that could confidently stand upon its own cinematic feet. Sadly, it did not. 

Of course, I am not against the idea of recycling familiar material and thematic concepts. In regards to the action thriller, just look at films like Joe Wright’s “Hanna” and especially Brad Bird's superior sequel “Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol” from last year and see how inventive and creative those films were. Or how about Josh Trank’s “Chronicle,” which took very familiar elements from comic book and science fiction and merged them all into a uniquely resonant whole. Or most smashingly, look at the works of Quentin Tarantino who, above most filmmakers working today, knows how to take cinematic archetypes and genres and spin them in a way where they become uniquely “Tarantino-ian”! None of that originality and flat out sense of fun is to be found within even one scene of “Safe House.”

While it is competently made and Epinosa shows that he indeed has some skill with piecing an action thriller together, I really hated his usage of the dreaded shaky-cam and chop-socky editing techniques, which was just so irritating and did nothing to provide any sense of adrenaline to the proceedings as the action was so difficult to follow. And even worse, the acting talents of no less than Brendon Gleeson, Vera Farmiga, Ruben Blades and Robert Patrick are all wasted in tiny, underwritten roles. Like I have often said, if you are lucky enough to have actors of that caliber in your film, then give them something to do!!

Even from a pure storytelling standpoint, “Safe House” falls, time and again, into laughable territory. While Ryan Reynolds gives it all he’s got as Matt Weston’s emerging action hero, he is undone by the hackneyed screenplay by having him exist as so unconvincingly innocent, naïve and crucially untested yet, he is somehow able to spring into action and drive a getaway car with the skill of the most seasoned stuntman, while also being choked from behind! Also, once Weston has Tobin Frost in his custody, it was improbable to me, to say the least, why he would allow a man so dangerous to have steering control of any vehicles they tended to share throughout the film.

Every time Frost escapes from Weston or any other pursuers, there just conveniently happens to be a massive 99% VS. 1% protest march to hide inside of. Or how about a well-populated match at a soccer stadium for that matter? It seemed as if anyone just closed their eyes to blink, frost escaped again and we are to believe that it is because he is a criminal genius and not because his captors are just not very observant or that the screenplay just dictated what is supposed to happen and we should just accept it all at face value. The suspension of disbelief factor was not in evidence.

Now perhaps it could be argued that “Safe House” was trying to delve a tad deeper by being a two-character piece that explores the inner lives of these two men as the film illustrates how one can become compromised and lose oneself in the uncompromising industry of spies and government secret intelligence. But, that is a huge stretch to take for a movie that is missing several brain cells.

And then, there is the issue of Denzel Washington, who deserves to be in films that are nothing less that the best of the best. While his acting abilities remain supremely intact in “Safe House,” and he again shows us how effortlessly he can slide from dapper elegance to menacing fury on a dime, for me, there was the sinking feeling that we have seen all of this before and much better. Just take some time and really think about his films in recent years. I loathed the ridiculous “The Book Of Eli” (2010) and his collaborations with Tony Scott, which include “Déjà Vu” (2006), “The Taking Of Pelham 1,2,3” (2009) and “Unstoppable” (2010) were all lackluster and only “Man On Fire” (2004) showed both men working in peak form. Even Ridley Scott’s crime epic “American Gangster” (2007) contained nothing but Washington’s greatest hits instead of a full, rich performance of the level we know he can deliver.  

Basically, Denzel Washington has delivered one populist action piece after another and “Safe House” felt to be more of the same dull pap with Washington’s trademark Cheshire cat grin and nuclear charisma at the core. But, this time it all increasingly felt to be presented with a “Yeah, I got this!” attitude therefore making “Safe House” nothing more than a sad, paycheck movie.

How sad it would be for all of us if Denzel Washington just showed up for the money in spite of the art. I have not throw in the towel by any means but I have my doubts that he has reached at stage where making movies may not hold for him what it may have in the past. We’ll never know for certain but I do hope that he will knock it out of the park once again. But, for now, “Safe House” just is not that movie by a long shot.   

And besides…when the most intensely felt moment in the entire film was hearing Kanye West and Jay Z’s collaborative “No Church In the Wild” during the film’s closing credits, you know that you’ve been had.