SAFE HOUSE (Daniel Esponosa, Universal, 2012)

To me these are two of the worst things I can hear prior to watching a film; "it wasn't that bad" or "it was way better than I thought it would be". As soon as I hear either usually that predetermines for me that I will not bother seeing the film in question. Most times I am right but there are exceptions and SAFE HOUSE (Daniel Espinosa, Universal, 2012) is one of those films. I watched the film and was really quite surprised at how good of a thriller it was. They did a good job with the films narrative and pacing, the casting and acting was good and I even liked some of the directorial work. As I said, "this film was way better than I thought it would be". The strongest parts of the film are its narrative and ultra quick pacing in which the film plays out. The narrative timeline is really only about 48 hours. This short time span lends realism to the narrative. In the life or death spy world decisions happen in seconds and the film captures this perfectly. This shortened time span to the narrative allows the director to push the pacing to a breakneck speed, almost too fast. This speed doesn't give the audience time to breathe and is always heightening the tension. At the same time it keeps the accelerator on its protagonist masking any plausibility holes within the narrative. You literally don't have time to think about anything, much like our protagonist Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds). Reynolds turns in a rather good performance as Weston. Departing from the snarky wise cracking roles that he almost always portrays Reynolds holds his own against Denzel, not an easy thing to accomplish. Denzel plays Tobin Frost and does so with usual aplomb. Always the coolest guy in the room, entirely under control, Denzel makes being a bad guy so much fun. The two eventually form a good partnership with Frost giving Weston the final ingredients he will need to succeed in his agency career. If you read anything I ever write you will know cinematography and particularly camera placement are the two things I love most to talk about in regards to technical work on a film. In the film Espinosa brings his European touch to the film as throughout he chooses to place the camera where it shouldn't be, places you wouldn't think of normally. I love this. If you are a director do as much of this as you can. The film did very well commercially and I wonder why it isn't as highly regarded of a film. Maybe the time of year it was released is a factor as Oscar season was in full power at the films release date. Or maybe since the film follows other great examples of the genre such as the Bourne films or TAKEN (Pierre Morel, EuropaCorp, 2008) that audiences no longer rave about a similar film in the same fashion. Maybe audiences have tired of Reynolds schtick. Whatever the case may be I was wrong about SAFE HOUSE and I am only glad enough that I was willing to give it a chance because it is a pretty good film.