One thing you quickly realize when you sit down to watch a Denzel Washington movie is he nearly always give the pleasurable illusion that whoever he is portraying, he is playing exactly himself. Whatever the scripted setup the spotlight is always on Denzel, the ultra-cool, can-do-it-in-his-sleep, nonpareil hero for all occasions. We’ve come accustomed to his responses to normally stress-filled situations–often comedic always command, not a little eager to showboat.
If his characters can do no wrong even in villainy, his choice of vehicles may be getting bit stale. Washington could stand a change-the-grain role similar to another great actor who always seems to play himself–Jack Nicholson when he took on About Schmidt, for instance. Denzel’s own “going against type” shouldn’t just be reserved for his occasional roles on the Broadway stage.
Safe House, full of all the gimmicks and doodads of a first-time screenwriter (David Guggenheim), explores the psycho world of 21st-century espionage. No, not like Tinker, Tailor Soldier, Spy, which while occasionally too tame for its own good (it was after all so explicitly 20th century) created a thinking man’s mystery with style and panache to burn. Leave your thinking cap in the lobby for this one.
For all the Sam Shepards, Vera Farmigas, and Brendan Gleeson in this cast, Safe House should have been a lot more than plot holes stitched together with dull action movie drones and only occasional jolts of adrenaline. Enough of car chases where guys going 80 miles per hour crash into an immovable object and walk out with a small cut on their face. Doesn’t anybody do a BELIEVABLE car chase scene (a la Bullit or The French Connection) anymore? Safe House’s cranked up treachery via interminable grade-B Bourne-style fight scenes (the film shares the Bourne franchise’s cinematographer, Oliver Wood) and those way too elongated car chase scenes strides at every turn to outdo both all other CIA movies and, well, itself.
Stand back to make room for all comparisons of Ryan Reynolds/Denzel versus Ethan Hawke/Denzel in Washington’s Oscar-winning Training Day, which also shared the wily mentor/innocent young buck theme. Unfortunately, it’s arena football here compared to Training Day’s NFL-playoff level filmmaking. A scene where Matt Weston (Reynolds) loses his legendary bad-boy fallen agent and now handcuffed hostage Tobin Frost (Denzel) inside a crowded soccer stadium begs the questions of why his bosses sent the untested CIA man there to get a key in a locker that could have been left anywhere? Or why after a harried Frost turns himself into the American Embassy in Capetown, the same crazed assassins pursuing Frost before his surrender also show up at the safe house that Weston has been caretaking. Someone doesn’t want him interrogated, maybe? Duh.
The assassins show up yet again when a freed Frost finds Ruben Blades in the middle of nowhere South African shantytown to help him forge some new documents. Eventually Weston, portrayed as a Yale grad and fluent in Afrikaans, catches on. There’s a mole in the CIA. By now Reynolds has to ditch his French girlfriend (Nora Arnezeder) because he doesn’t want her caught up in this stuff. Lucky her. She gets to leave the movie early.
The rest of us could never walk out on a Denzel Washington movie. He’s far too ingrained in our inner movie hero radar. Can’t wait for the next chance to watch him play himself again.
4 Spys Gone to Hell (out of 10)