'Safe House' -- Spy and mind games in brutal bromance
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Denzel Washington in 'Safe House.'
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"You crushed my windpipe," the raspy-voiced CIA operative reminds his prisoner.
"You locked me in the trunk," he counters, as if one excuses the other in "Safe House."
When the first man is played by Ryan Reynolds and, more important, the second by Denzel Washington, moviegoers are willing to excuse an excess of blood and violence, a high body count, some purposely shaky camera work, muddled motivations and chase scenes in which a driver eluding assassins speeds 100 mph while fighting off a cuffed attacker trying to choke him out.
In "Safe House," Mr. Washington is Tobin Frost, a former CIA superstar who went rogue nine years earlier and started literally selling out the agency. After scoring some damning data that could fetch millions of dollars, he eventually ends up in a CIA "safe house" in Cape Town, South Africa.
- Starring: Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds.
- Rating: R for strong violence throughout and some language.
It's a lonely, low-level outpost staffed by Matt Weston (Mr. Reynolds), who is desperate for a reassignment or some action, but not this much. When mercenaries attack the safe house and the agents about to question Frost -- after they waterboard him -- Weston makes a break for it, commandeers a car and orders Frost into the trunk.
Frost, of course, knows the protocol and starts to predict Weston's next move and how the high-ranking desk jockeys at the CIA headquarters back in Langley, Va., will react. Frost tries to mess with Weston while the young op's boss in the States promises, "Get Frost to that [next] safe house, and you can write your own ticket."
But Mr. Reynolds' idealistic agent starts to adopt some of the veteran's cynical wariness even as the army of people on their trail grows. And the last man standing has to decide how, or if, he will execute the final play of the game.
First Published February 10, 2012 12:00 am
