Safe House: A safe bet

What’s on now: Trolling IMDB for new movie trailers.

I think I found my February movie!

Backstory: I’m on a tight budget. Now that my fledgling self has officially left the nest and I am no longer living on my parents’ dime, I have to (gasp) save whatever I can so as not to go broke or hungry. Ah, freedom. Thy name is Spaghettios.

Anywho, due to the aforementioned budget constraints, I have decided to limit myself to only one new-movie outing per month. So, monthly I spring for a ticket to the nice theatre in town (you know, the kind where the floors are not coated in questionable amounts of stickiness). That means I have to wait for the best movie and take a leap of faith. So far, the system has worked out fine, and I have yet to be disappointed by a movie-of-the-month. Captain America was September’s and Real Steel was November’s, in case you were wondering. I owe myself an October. I’m saving it for when all the big deal flicks come out during the Christmas season.

On to the real reason for this post. I recently saw the first trailer for a February release called Safe House. I’d heard rumors of it already, but nothing more than the basic plot and unconfirmed cast.

The plot didn’t draw me in so much as the cast. Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds? In the same movie?? Sign me up! Washington brings the lion’s share of the acting chops and Reynolds… well, he wasn’t voted the Sexiest Man Alive for no reason! And he can act too, of course, I’m not trying to objectify the poor man. He gets that enough from… well, everybody. But I think he’s definitely shown he can keep up with someone of Washington’s seasoned caliber, especially after Buried. That one still affects me months after watching it once. I shouldn’t have watched it alone in the dark. Lesson learned.

Even so, Safe House doesn’t exactly seem like it’s going to be the kind of flick that demands too much serious acting from either of them. It ain’t exactly Shakespeare. It looks like it’s another cerebro-politico-action movie, kind of along the lines of The Bourne Identity or Salt or maybe even a little like Mission: Impossible. Yup, you guessed it, Safe House is another CIA movie. But I don’t mean that pessimistically!

Based on the preview and online synopses, Washington plays Tobin Frost, an ex-CIA operative who has gone rogue. Reynolds is Matt Weston, a relatively green (lol) non-operative employee of the agency, whose fairly boring job is to babysit the CIA safe house in Johannesburg, South Africa. Weston wants nothing more than to get enough experience so he can do something more than sit in an empty bunker all day, but he feels like his job is a waste of time. Can you see the irony coming yet?

Weston’s boring job gets a sudden jolt when Frost is brought into the safe house as a dangerous prisoner. Then things really fall to crap when someone starts attacking the safe house, presumably to retrieve Frost. It falls on Weston to keep Frost both safe and in custody. What follows is a slam-bang cat-and-mouse game between Weston, Frost and whoever is trying to kill them. Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air, Source Code) and Brendan Gleeson (Troy, Kingdom of Heaven) also star.

The trailer is rife with blazing guns, car chases, car crashes, things that go boom and plenty of yelling and running. All the necessary ingredients for a halfway decent action flick!   

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to it. One thing’s for sure, something pretty crazy-awesome is going to have to come along to knock Safe House out of the frontrunner spot for my February movie.

Starring: Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson

Directed by: Daniel Espinosa

Rated NYR

2012