Safe House by David Guggenheim - 7 out of 10

Safe House by David Guggenheim 
7 out of 10


"Nice...not thrilling, but nice"

This is one line from The History of the World by Mel Brooks, that could apply to the Safe House.
In that comedy, the emperor Dom DeLuise has in front of him immense treasures, gold, rubies brought in something like a bathtub.

Maybe it is the same for this motion picture, there are so many hidden gems waiting for you to discover and I just missed them.
However, I see this film as more entertaining than Black Panther that had its premiere on the local HBO a couple of days ago.

Ryan Reynolds plays a CIA debutant, in charge with a safe house in Cape Town.
Nothing much happens there, so for this and some other reasons he wants a transfer and asks his superior officer, David Barlow, to support him.

Meanwhile, Tobin Frost aka Denzel Washington has some very explosive files and he becomes the target of an assassination attempt attempt.
After shootings, the murder of the man who was with him - we would later learn that this was a former MI6 agent- car accidents and a close shave with the killers, Tobin Frost enters the American Consulate.

Once he is there, the higher echelons of the Agency are alerted, David Barlow and Catherine Linklater aka Vera Farmiga are summoned by the deputy director of the CIA, Harlan Whitford.
It is a top priority to get Tobin Frost out of the country, but they do not have the means to extract him for another twelve or more hours.

They contact Matt Weston and tell him to prepare the Safe House for they have guests arriving soon.
When the team escorting the precious prisoner is inside, they summarily start interrogation, with the most brutal methods.

It looks like the infamous water boarding.
Worse is still to come, for the man who had wanted to kill Tobin Frost is at the gates of the supposedly Safe House, with a team of professionals.

After a violent exchange of machine gun fire, the team holding the evidently sought after guest is eliminated.
Matt Weston takes the initiative and brings Frost with him, while pointing a pistol at him.

He is given coordinates from headquarters, but the rogue former CIA operative is not willing to cooperate, on the contrary, he starts kicking and abusing the rookie while he is driving.
After a fight, they get to the airport, where Tobin Frost creates a diversion, starts shouting that the young man is trying to kill him and he escapes in the commotion created.

Fat and mouse yet again, up to the point where the very intuitive, clever young agent understands where the older man is going.
Frost tries to get fake documents from an old friend, when the same foes are catching up with him and they kill the friend, his wife and so many other.

The escape is hard, as we can imagine in a top notch action movie, over the tops of the houses of a poor neighborhood.
When they reach the next Safe House, there is yet another big fight, with a knife, the broken glass used as weapon and more.

I dislike very much the conclusion:

The CIA is vicious, engaged in so many ruthless killings and with a multitude of corrupt traitors.
Sounds far fetched.

But then who would believe that the American president would stand next to the murderer Putin and say he believes him over his own agencies?
Furthermore, the same fool criticizes the everyone, except dictators like Putin, Kim, Duterte, Xi, whom he admires.

Safe House is a decent, not extraordinary movie.