Moviegoers last saw Ryan Reynolds in a forgettable body-swapping comedy called The Change-Up, and Denzel Washington as an heroic train engineer in the ho-hum drama, Unstoppable.
Guess they both got mediocre out of their systems.
Now the two actors co-star in a brisk new thriller called Safe House, an adrenaline rush of a movie about a novice CIA agent and the rogue agent he's charged with minding in Cape Town, South Africa.
Reynolds plays Matt Weston, a rookie in the espionage business. He's keen to prove what he can do in the field, but so far, nothing has been asked of him and nobody has been brought to his safe house in Cape Town.
Washington co-stars as Tobin Frost, a famous agent who went rogue and spent a decade selling national secrets to the highest bidder. Fearing for his life, Frost has had to seek refuge at a U. S. Embassy. Now he's on his way to Matt's safe house pending transport to the U.S.
Matt is excited to finally see some action, especially as it involves having an agent as infamous as Frost as his "house guest". A whole CIA team turns up to interrogate Frost at the safe house; their interrogation includes forms of torture, and Matt is obviously disturbed at seeing the "good guys" behave like "bad guys". He's about to find out just how blurred the line between such things can be.
Then trouble comes to the safe house. The CIA team is attacked and a gang of heavily armed thugs comes after Frost. After a massive gun fight, Matt is the only CIA agent left standing; he takes Frost and gets away, which, happily, necessitates an exhilarating car chase.
Our rookie quickly figures out that Frost has information about corruption in high government places. Far away at CIA headquarters in the U.S., characters played by Sam Shepard, Vera Farmiga and Brendan Gleeson play the senior agents desperate to get Frost into the States. It won't be easy. He has shown Matt the corruption rampant even in their own organization, and Matt will not be fooled again.
Safe House is an action thriller with an emphasis on the action. The film has enough shoot-outs, car chases, explosions and gruesome hand-to-hand combat to make fans of the genre very cheerful. Washington projects mature wisdom and Reynolds gets to show energetic tenacity, a sort of Pinky and the Brain dynamic that makes them a terrific match on the big screen. The movie tends to the formulaic, but the writing is better than average and the cast is impressive. And the story never hesitates to venture over to the dark side.
If you're looking for something that will let you feel as if you got your money's worth at the movies, Safe House is a safe bet.
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