Safe House (2012)

End of last year I edited a movie review at work about this movie Safe House.  Now I am no fan of Denzel Washington, I never was.  Ryan Reynolds, well, he is okay – good in a RomCom, generally likable, but I’m not crazy about him.  And then the film was shot primarily in Cape Town.  After seeing the trailer I was quite looking forward to it, regardless of the actors, and I can tell you now the movie delivers!

Safe House has such an energetic feel to it, but at the same time it is slow moving at bits.  The best way to describe it is to compare it to an iced lake.  Still on top, but you can see the water rushing below and now and then you step on a piece of ice that breaks away and water splashes out on top.  The film has an interesting grungy look; I assume the director wanted to use film specifically to get that film grain.  The action scenes are amazing; they don’t shy away from it.  The car chasing seen through the streets of Cape Town blew my mind.  This is just the tip of the iconic mountain. 

The acting from Denzel and Ryan is amazing.  I have a new found respect for both of them.  But the one thing that Ryan should not do, or practice a bit more before he tries it a gain, is speak Afrikaans.  If that was not subtitled in the film I would not have known what the heck he was saying.  But I’ll give him props for trying. 

It’s not the average run of the mill action film.  It is quite psychological in all.  The downside is the typecasting of the other actors made me recognize the real bad guy quite early on, but it was more of a “It’s probably him!” moment than a “It’s him! It’s him!” moment.  Regardless of that, you still have to go see it, and see it on the big screen.  Seeing South Africa shot without desaturating and bleach bypassing it to show the so called "Harsh-African-Sun" is amazing.  It just goes to show that when you know what you do you can make anything look the way you want it to look.  You better take someone with you to this movie, and make them buy popcorn as well, because ten minutes into the movie mine was already finished.  This way you can share with the other person, because one large popcorn simply isn’t enough.