As he nears 60, Denzel Washington has begun to carve out a niche as the grumpy or morally compromised foil to young, gravitas-seeking white actors.
He menaced Ethan Hawke in “Training Day” and taunted Chris Pine in “Unstoppable,” allowing both actors to look more impressive simply by surviving the encounter.
But “Safe House” spends less time on the promising interplay between Reynolds and Washington than on the generic spycraft action its makers aren’t quite up to. As fun as the movie occasionally is, it can’t make its own drama convincing.
Reynolds plays Matt Weston, a CIA newbie assigned to man a rarely used Cape Town facility. Every day he clocks in, checks the supplies and waits to see if he’ll finally get something to do. Today he does: A squad of tough agents arrive to interrogate Washington’s Tobin Frost, a top spy who went rogue nine years ago and has been selling America’s secrets ever since. When the safe house is attacked by baddies bent on killing Frost, Weston escapes with him, trying to keep his prisoner alive until a safer new hideout can be arranged.
David Guggenheim’s screenplay proves willing to sacrifice sense for cheap action: With Frost in a car trunk Weston could calmly drive out of harm’s way. Instead he speeds off, making himself the target in a car chase.
Cinematographer Oliver Wood (who shot the “Bourne” films) finds exotic color and texture in his South African settings, but Swedish director Daniel Espinosa isn’t as adept with chase scenes as “Bourne” director Paul Greengrass: We sometimes lose track of who’s supposed to be where, and which direction the bullets are flying.
And where “Bourne” milked its Langley, Va.-based scenes expertly, making the most of its time with actors such as Joan Allen, “Safe House” does too little with turf-hungry spooks played by Vera Farmiga and Brendan Gleeson, and assigns chuckle-inducing dialogue to CIA chief Sam Shepard.
Turns out, it’s easier for filmmakers to show an actor surviving should-be-fatal gut wounds than a battle of wits with Denzel Washington.
