Safe House

The CIA seemingly makes for such good fodder when it comes to screenwriters in Hollywood, because we see so many espionage films that surround around this agency. It makes one wonder about the solidity of the workings of the agency considering  Hollywood's obsession with it. Well, they're still obsessed, and it's now in the incarnation of "Safe House".

Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) is a CIA rookie who, after 12 months of not getting an assignment in manning a safe house in Cape Town, South Africa, does and it's in the form of Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington), the CIA's most wanted rogue agent who is captured and taken to the safe house by agent, Daniel Kiefer (Robert Patrick). During Frost's interrogation not even 4 hours after arriving, the safe house is breached by mercenaries who want Frost. Weston and Frost escape and must stay out of the gunman's sight until they can get to another safe house which CIA's bosses, David Barlow (Brendan Gleeson), Catherine Linklater (Vera Farmiga), and Harlan Whitford (Sam Shepard) has given Weston the location of.

Others to round out the cast are Ruben Blades as Carlos Villar, Nora Arnezeder as Ana Moreau, Weston's girlfriend, Liam Cunningham as Alec Wade, and Joel Kinnaman as Keller.

This was directed by a relative newcomer, Daniel Espinosa ("Babylonsjukan" '04, "Outside Love" '07, "Easy Money" '10) and considering his lack of experience, he proved himself worthy, because the chemistry between Washington and Reynolds was very effective. And his pacing of these characters was right on. It was written by David Guggenheim ("Exit Strategy" (TV movie) '11), and since he has virtually little experience, this was better than I expected. It was a little long in the tooth, and some areas didn't need to go into such detail, but all in all, it really moved and definitely kept your attention.

I went to see this mostly for Washington, and realized that Reynolds was equally as effective in his role.Reynolds is one of those actors which the more he works, the better he gets. This was slickly done and has some of the most incredible stunt driving in a film I have seen in years. This is worthy to see in the muliplex just to see how these two characters interact with all its grittiness and cat and mouse playing.

Out of 4 stars: 3                    Rated: R                        115min.