Safe House (2012)

Another run of the mill CIA agent gone rogue drama cum action which fails to make any different impression than the other ones with the same subject. There was a time I would have called myself a big big fan of Denzel Washington but I think it was about 5-8 years back. In last as many years he has done so many same movies with no head and tail that his movies have stopped impressing me. Not one movie comes to my mind from last as many years that I would love to see again with him in lead of course other than "the bone collector".

This one too starts with a typical "world around him is on fire" pace and goes flat around half the time and then you simply keep on watching the predictable stuff and feel like you wrote the whole thing yourself and they just shot it for you. At best its an average one time watch with nothing that you take home.

The very starting of the movie is super action when they locate this guy meeting a MI6 agent in cape town. There is a team of thugs waiting to shoot him right outside the cafe as he has got some chip that everyone wants to have. The way he walks out of the cafe and dodges his followers is typical Denzy stuff. That confident face and brisk walk. He is actually not running and clears off the goons in no time. Car chase, accident and shootings does makes you happy. The best is when they take him to the first safe house and start torturing him with a towel tied to his face with dripping water. The moment they take that towel off him - he quickly asks "how long was that - I mean time" and we realize he is a hard nut to crack.

Agency activity is again same old story. Have seen those typical CIA meetings and briefings in so many movies that I can tell in the very first five minutes - who amongst them is a bad guy and whose good. Whose going to die and whose going to live. Its that predictable and simple. Resume reading is to impress the audience. Ryan reynolds is there to just support the big guy in keeping him safe till the help arrives from USA. From one house to another its a tail of their survival. There are two teams of CIA behind them - one wants to extract them safely and another wants to remove them after taking over the chip. Question is what's there in the chip??

Take this for the starters. Ryan is a CIA operative and has a girl friend too. Once he vanishes from the house he is supposed to secure he instructs her to come over - she even comes to meet him and doesn't have one clue as what he does for a living. On top of that when he confesses that he is an agent - she cries and beats him up and walks out on him. C'mon man. Even a woman is not impressed by her boy friend whose a CIA agent? I found it funny. Rather they shud have kept it light and funny. It would have been good.

Second, once they go out of the first house and are running for their life. Ryan enters some sort of a cyber cafe and operates the pc to check some data from his head office. I mean is it that simple? As if bloody CIA gives their agents a login and password to their drives which can be accessed from any tom dick and harry cyber cafe? Simply superb. Even the ending is so predictable and cliche to say the least. I will definitely call it another bloody blunder of choice from denzel.

One of my favorite and a beautiful vera farmiga is wasted in a thankless role. Brendan gleeson - less said the better. At best as I said its an average one time watch. May be wait till its dvd is out or catch it soon on HBO.