FILM

USA 2012 115 mins Dir: Daniel Espinosa Starring: Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson

One of those thrillers that become progressively less interesting with each successive twist, 'Safe House' benefits from the always-watchable Denzel Washington in charismatic bad guy mode and some excellent location work by young Swedish director Daniel Espinosa, making his Hollywood debut.

Ryan Reynolds is the ambitious, bored 'housekeeper' of a fortified CIA safe house in Cape Town. Yup, the guy who starred in 'Buried' is getting cabin fever all over again in this Agency backwater. Naturally, this means something dramatic is about to happen. Enter rogue former intelligence agent Denzel Washington, who's now the most wanted man in the world. Injecting himself with a tiny chip full of top secret gubbins, he's pursued across the city by Even Badder Guys wielding really big guns until he gives himself up at the US embassy and is frogmarched into Ryan's safe house for an illegal waterboarding session. The Even Badder Guys burst in and kill everybody dead, forcing rookie Ryan and menacing Denzel to go on the run together. Back at the Pentagon control room, everybody stares at computer screens and shouts clichés.

So, stop me if you've heard this before, but Ryan has to figure out what's going on and who he can trust, while Denzel has his own not-entirely-helpful agenda. Vera Farmiga does her best Evil Bitch, but when Brendan Gleeson is cast as her departmental rival it's really no contest. We've all seen 'The Guard', right? If the maguffin and its attendant internal CIA shenanigans all turn out to be a bit ho-hum, and the frantic third act only draws to a halt when everybody's too incapacitated to move, Espinosa does at least make imaginative use of the South African scenery, delivering a terrific township rooftop chase sequence. (Robin Askew)

Website www.nooneissafe.com/

Opens: February 24

Copyright Robin Askew 2012