Starring Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds. Written by David Guggenheim. Directed by Daniel Espinosa 14A. 115 min. Opens Feb. 10.
Let’s face it: No one goes rogue better than Denzel Washington. In his new CIA thriller, Safe House, he passes the torch onto Ryan Reynolds as he plays the sage master teaching the rookie how things really work in the CIA. It’s compelling to watch their relationship unfold cautiously as the student slowly learns to trust the teacher, but solid performances from both actors can’t help shake the feeling that we’ve seen this all before.
Reynolds plays Matt Weston, a young CIA agent assigned to keep watch over a safe house in Cape Town, South Africa. He has a kind of mentor in David Barlow (Brendan Gleeson), an official at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, who insists Matt will get a better assignment if he just sits tight. When former agent Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington) is captured and taken to the safe house where Matt spends his days in mind-numbing solitude, Matt gets the experience he sorely craves—and a different kind of education than he was expecting.
We’re told that in his time at the CIA, Frost “literally rewrote” interrogation protocol. Now he has no allegiances and is wanted on several continents. The role is certainly not a stretch for Washington (comparisons to Training Day are inevitable), and his knowing persistence provides a welcome counterpart to Reynolds’ panic and uncertainty. But director Daniel Espinosa has stuffed the film full of so many car-chase scenes and gun fights that there’s barely any opportunity to digest all the action. It’s a shame, because if he had taken the time to develop the characters just a little further, we might care a little more whether or not they make it out of the chase alive
