Safe House / Safe

Safe

Getting killed is bad business.

A little Chinese girl who happens to be very gifted with numbers is kidnapped and used by Chinese mobsters in the USA to "count" for them. She is eventually also given important information that makes her a target not only by the rival Russian mobsters but also to the corrupt police force. Jason Statham, who manages to piss off the Russian mobsters right at the start of the film, runs into her by coincidence and decides to protect her because he's the protagonist, and that's what protagonists do.

 

Does he look like someone you want to piss off?

Good stuff first: Statham is in good fighting form here, and racks up a decent body count. The little actress (Catherine Chan) is also very good and not annoying in any way. It's also nice to see Reggie Lee (Sgt. Wu from Grimm) here, and while the film ends somewhat abruptly it fits in well and doesn't become dragging at any point. Worst part is the start, which is unnecessarily messy and convoluted with all the sudden cuts. It's a good example of misuse of timeline as it only serves to be annoying.

All up it's an average action flick that doesn't require much thinking, and I give it two bullets out of five. Would I watch it again? A solid maybe. It's really neither here nor there. Guess I'm playing it Safe?

~~~

Safe House

Making house keeping look awesome.

Ryan Reynolds is a "house keeper" for a CIA safe house, which is made out to be a very boring and lonely post. This all changes when a highly wanted criminal (Denzel Washington) is brought in for safe keeping, resulting in all hell breaking lose. Despite the title and the setup, very little of the movie is spent in a safe house which is good as the script keeps everything in flux, in turn keeping the characters and the audience on their toes.

Good thing too or it would be a boring movie.

There are also good action sequences with shooting, hand to hand and the mandatory "car chase if movie is not using heavy CGI". Acting wise it also gets a thumbs up from me, though it does suffer a little from a few plot holes and "but he could have done -x-" moments towards the end. I give this film three and a half guest rooms out of five and can easily recommend it to action fans. I would also happily watch it again.