SAFE HOUSE

Starring : Denzel Washington,  Ryan Reynolds, Robert Patrick, Sam Shepard

At: PVR & others

Rated: 6/10

If it is Denzel Washington, it has to be dark, edgy, frenzied and hyper. Which, of course, is quite a contrast from the seasoned, measured and deep performances that come out of this experienced performer’s rich cache.

In this one, which is ridden with corruption all the way to the top of the shadowy CIA headquarters, Denzel is the renegade agent who has long left the agency to become a freelance spy trader. And he has so much of discriminating material on the world’s various spy agencies that Governments of five continents want him behind bars.

On one such mission to procure a detailed file on the not-so-good activities of spooks all the way from the CIA to MI6 to Mossad and even the KGB, he is on the run in Cape Town. All kinds of people are wanting to kill him so he gives himself up to the American embassy, only to create a flutter in the CIA. He is sent to a safe house where a rookie CIA agent is the housekeeper who has been there in the empty confines to get his first consignment, or is it assignment. Reynolds, as the agent waiting for his slice of action, does well to stand up to Denzel’s mature ways as an actor and completely cold ways as the rogue agent he is.

The film, which makes you forget you need to take your next breath, puts you as much on the edge with its high-octane action as it makes you angry for being subjected to a frenetic hand-held camera which gives you motion sickness. Going from one safe house to the other, one attack to the other, one car chase to the other and one roof hopping to the other, there is enough to keep you engaged.

Other than that, it’s to Washington’s credit that he puts life into those small crevices where follies come into the department of story-telling. On the whole, quite a pacy work.