Safe House

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Paul

When you can pick who the mole in the CIA is from the trailer, you got some trouble.

Actually in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter how obvious everything was going to be. getting to the end was a fun enough ride I didn't mind so much. Or perhaps I'm just reacting to a welcome change from an entire day of romance films at the cinema.

Seeing this in a big cinema with massive pumping sound helps. The gun shots really pop. There's a rather thrilling car chase towards the beginning of the film, after the initial bust out of the safe house, despite the overly shaky and gritty Tony Scott style cinematography and editing. In fact that goes for all the action in the film. It was all quite enjoyable despite the shaky overly graded filming. Perhaps it's in Denzel Washington's contract to be filmed only in high contrast. High contrast doesn't automatically equal a gritty film guys.

There were more than a few times some dodgy focus pulling was getting in the way. I think I even recognised a few attempts at digitally sharpening or resizing, as the grain suddenly jumps out at you from shot to shot, to the point where even a laymen would notice. Sometimes I wish you could still shot action films like they did in the early 90's.

The awesome sound did a lot to alleviate the shakycam incomprehensibility. I remember noting that you could quite clearly recognise that one of the assassins had pulled a knife out during a fight where you couldn't see what the hell was going on, simply because of the overly exaggerated unsheathing metal sound. You couldn't even see the knife until 4 shots later but it managed to u the stakes where it needed it thanks to the sound.

Denzel Washington is doing what he does, playing another badass guy. Ryan Reynolds takes his shirt off. Pretty much everyone else in the film gets killed. High body count. Everyone that appears in the film gets shot at least once.

A trashy but enjoyable action film, the perfect capper to a double movie marathon day at the cinema.