Review of Safe House (2012) by John P — 14 Aug 2012

Damn, and I thought Ethan Hawke had it bad. If you are a young white man in training then do not get in the car with Denzel Washington or you will have a bad day. It is like a rule now, in Hollywood, that old white actors get paired up with Morgan Freeman as the friendly old black man, but if you're a young white actor you get paired with Denzel who will come fuck up your shit. I mean there's a scene where Ryan throws Denzel in the trunk of a car and, what does Denzel do? Instead of breaking out, like most spies do, he climbs through the back seats and starts beating the shit out of Ryan Reynolds. Oh what a great scene that was, too bad it was one of the only good scenes because the rest of this movie made me want to get locked up inside of a safe house.

This movie felt like a Tony Scott film, but without Tony Scott in it. It had every other element in it to where it made you think it was Tony Scott from the way it looked, to the shakey cam thing, the constant edits, and there's always a traitor at the top scenario. When you watch this film, you can clearly tell that Denzel Washington looks like he is tired doing the same old schtick in being in action movies. I mean this is the first time that I realized that Denzel just looks old. It's not that he is sleep walking but it's just something to where I have seen him do this so many times that I just get bored with him after seeing him do these things that you already seen him do before. The interaction and dialogue between Denzel and Ryan Reynolds was okay, but I didn't felt that it was Oscar Award winning or anything like that. Ryan Reynolds is that guy who I like despite the roles that he picks. He has the worst luck and yet, for some reason, I still like him. He was the only person that I liked in this movie where he was a badass. This movie had so many plot holes right from the beginning that it didn't quite connect. I am also getting tired of these espionage plots where somebody says, "I have the disk" or "I have to get this information somewhere." This is the 21st Century, there's Cloud computing and other means of storing information. Over all, it's your typical spy movie with everything you have seen before in other spy movies. The fight scenes are great and all of the supporting characters do not last very long because they get killed as quickly as they appear. It is a forgettable film which is why I give this movie two out of five stars.