SAFE HOUSE

Bland but capable Ryan Reynolds is a CIA agent based in Cape Town South Africa who badly wants a promotion to another more glamorous assignment in another more glamorous city like Paris.  It's his lucky day!  Denzel Washington plays an infamous traitor (with the unlikely name of Tobin Frost) who turns himself in and gets water boarded by the T-1000 before mercenaries show up and start executing everybody.  Denzel Washington could play this part in his sleep and probably did.  On paper, the similarities to Training Day (boring vanilla lead pulled in over his head by morally gray Denzel) must have seemed like a surefire bet.  But in practice there are no quotable lines, no memorable events, and no chance at the Oscars.

One of the problems is that whilst Training Day presented a murky view of a complicated, dangerous world, this film offers a simplified-to-the-point-of-being-boring look at the world of spyjinks.  Is Denzel a conniving opportunist who rationalizes his treason with flashy rhetoric or is he not-so-secretly fighting systemic corruption that's as widespread and far-reaching as it is generic and undeveloped?  It's not much of a stumper.  Denzel says that somebody else is the traitor, and there are several recognizable actors with seemingly nothing to do for the story except be eventually revealed as turncoats.

But enough of that.  Who are the overqualified character actors filling out the suspect pool?  Sam Shephard, Vera Farmiga and Brendan Gleeson are the only employees of the CIA who don't just sit in chairs delivering exposition (they stand to do that) and one of them even uses the exact phrase that Denzel warns the traitor will use.  The phrase is so banal however (something like 'good job kid') that I already forgot it and I doubt it would be a very effective way to smoke out a mole.

The scene-stealing character in all this is Cape Town.  We've seen everything else a million times before, but South Africa is relatively unsullied by the nonstop production schedule of Hollywood overseas locales.  This is a spy story however, so pretty much any city that the CIA could conceivably operate a safe house in could be used.  It's a bad sign when the most interesting part of a movie that could have been set anywhere in the world is where it's set.

~ Tobin Frost?  Come on.

~ Denzel in a heavy overcoat, glasses and fedora is supposed to be his disguise but I think in (sunny) South Africa it makes him more noticeable.

~ Ryan Reynolds kills a stadium police officer at one point, and shows just enough remorse so that I can say that he shows remorse.

~ Foreigners playing spies, cops, or lawyers always seems to bother me.  Even with every other ridiculous thing going on, the idea that an Irishman could rise through the ranks of American Intelligence sticks in my craw the most.

~The CIA seems very small in this movie.  Sam Shephard only has two employees that he talks to, and after the shit hits the fan, he sends both of them to Cape Town to sort things out.  They even discuss the fastest they can scramble a team to South Africa, but decide instead to wait a day and then just fly some middle aged bureaucrats over.  Fair enough.