Safe House

So, this past Monday, in the midst of a snow … not storm, precisely, but there was an awful lot of it … well, we went to see Safe House. We tied the trailer game, although I’m willing to concede the week to Evan since I think he started saying Battleship a split-second before me, but I got it out faster. Besides that, Evan got 21 Jump Street, I got GI Joe, he got Project X, and I got Bourne.

After two studio logos (Universal and Relativity), the movie started with shots of Cape Town, in South Africa (for those of us who are geographically challenged). Then we follow Ryan Reynolds (Matt) and Denzel Washington (Frost) as they go about their separate days. Matt has a very boring job but has to lie to his girlfriend because he works at the CIA, watching over a Safe House (something we’ve all heard about in action movies and spy books, but which tend to get glossed over). Frost has a meeting with a traitor in MI:5, and then has to evade pursuit from some mercenaries (by the way, if you hadn’t noticed by now, pursuit is just about my favourite word in reviews right now, slightly edging out awesomeness).

Frost can’t get away, and continues to get shot at and chased until he escapes into the US consulate. From there, he’s taken to the Safe House that Matt looks after. We also get some shots of the CIA base back in Langley, Virginia, where Matt’s patron (Brendan Gleeson) and his rival (Vera Farmiga) are working.

Things spin out of control when the Safe House is attacked, and a lot of shaky-cam ensues as Frost tries to escape, both from the killers and from Matt, who needs to take him to another Safe House.

Plot threads are unravelled, and minor people are killed, and there are good people who’re actually bad, and bad people who’re actually good, and then bad again (wha?) and a more shaky-cam.

This movie tries to go the realistic route, which isn’t a bad idea. It just made me realize that I enjoy a lot more ridiculous in my movies. Take the A-Team, for instance. Ludicrously over-the-top, but I like it a lot more than Safe House. Sure, Safe House plays injuries as a real thing (people go into shock, mumble unintelligibly, and then die), and it even has gunshots being accurately loud (I don’t think real people understand how loud a gunshot in an enclosed space is), but being real tends to take the fun out of it.

I try to give movies extra points for trying something new, but that’s usually for a stunt I’ve never seen before, not for verisimilitude. The shaky-cam did not help. I know it’s supposed to put us in the middle of the action, but actually being in the middle of the action would be quite a bit different than a shaky-cam. Our brains interpret data like that differently that what you can project on a movie screen. So please, just get rid of the shaky-cam. Not that any movie producer will ever do that, because a shaky-cam will (possibly) cover up the fact that there’s actually very little action, or terribly choreographed action, just badly done action.

I did like that instead of just wondering about one person’s loyalty, we got to wonder about which sides each member of the cast is on. It’s just too bad that they set up some of the actors too well, so we could almost say, half an hour before it is was shown, “Oh, that person is actually good; this person is actually bad.”

All told, it’s a DVD movie. There is some action, and the invasion-to-car chase is actually quite good. But the rest of it goes downhill. Yes, bonus points for realistically portraying things other movies don’t. I’m sure that appealed to some subset of critics who like that type of thing. But not me. I demand more ridiculous.