Source Code

Safe House

Denzel Washington (Unstoppable) has built an immensely successful career that is both prolific and praiseworthy.  His body of work includes biopics, period pieces, action movies, and dramas alike.  He’s an award winning A-list actor that has managed to retain some degree of realism and accessibility, despite the well-deserved fame.  However, Washington is not immune from being pigeonholed like any other actor who routinely chooses similar roles.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because he does it well.  I’m just saying, whether it’s The Taking of Pelham 123, Déjà Vu, Man on Fire, or the aforementioned Unstoppable  – we’ve seen it before: Washington saves the day.  Safe House features Washington in a departure from his customary heroic roles, though he winds up an unlikely protagonist by the time the credits roll.

Washington stars as Tobin Frost, a rogue CIA agent who has been off the grid for years.   He resurfaces seeking amnesty at a U.S. consulate after a deal goes wrong and his criminal counterparts begin deadly pursuit.  Next he is transported to a government safe house manned by novice agent Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds, The Change-Up).  Frost was once an elite operative, trained in psychological manipulation and interrogation.  Now he is public enemy no. 1, a criminal so elusive that it seems the only way he could be caught is if he surrendered.  Frost is in possession of a data chip containing valuable classified info, and there are several factions who will stop at nothing to get it; but now he is in the custody of the CIA equivalent of the mailroom guy.  When the safe house is ambushed, Weston is faced with some tough choices.  He must secure the high level asset without getting himself killed.  Meanwhile Frost is yammering the whole time, planting little seeds of doubt in Weston’s head about the Agency, causing him to question the circumstances surrounding their fortuitous coup of the nation’s top traitor.

Safe House featured Washington at his charismatic best.  There was one early scene where he practically radiated off the screen, eyes twinkling, head cocked to the side.  “Don’t I look good?” he asks another character.  “Yes,” says the woman sitting next to me in the theater.  I had to chuckle.  He’s still got “it,” but I’ll admit I found some of the physical scenes a little unrealistic, especially one where he runs from rooftop to rooftop in hard bottom shoes.  Safe House is rightfully marketed as a Denzel Washington flick, as the rest of the cast dwindled by comparison.  Reynolds did a capable job as the wet-behind-the ears newbie, but it’s hard to hold your own next to Washington.  He wasn’t bad, but he just seemed a step behind Denzel, both in terms of character and performance.  Vera Farmiga (Source Code) is always pretty good, but her role was a basic one.

Safe House was an enjoyable movie for me, mainly because of Denzel Washington.  He carried the movie, and he’s the main attraction.  I thought he was worth the price of admission, though the movie itself wasn’t as smart as some of his others.  It was a little formulaic and not very suspenseful.  It’s made clear from the outset that Frost is being set up and who’s responsible.  The movie’s so-called twist hardly qualifies as a surprise, and the plot wasn’t terribly intricate.  Just sit back and bask in the Denzeliness. Grade: B+

The Ides of March

“Beware the ides of March…”  I’ve always liked the Shakespeare quote from Caesar, an ominous warning of betrayal.  It’s appropriate that the George Clooney (The American) directed Ides of March is named for the quote, as the movie is similarly characterized by the betrayal and cold ambition found in Shakespeare’s play.

Ryan Gosling (Drive), Philip Seymour Hoffman (currently in Moneyball), Marisa Tomei (The Lincoln Lawyer), and Paul Giamatti (most recently of The Hangover II) comprise a highly-acclaimed cast that is the best collection of actors I’ve seen in a while.  Clooney is Democratic governor Mike Morris, an ambitious contender for the White House, especially if he can win the Ohio primary that looms ahead.  An integral part of Morris’ campaign is his campaign manager and aide, Stephen Meyers (Gosling).  Meyers is a sharp young gun with political savvy beyond his years.  He is calculating and shrewd, and will tell you that he’s done more at his age than most of his older counterparts.  However, it is Meyers’ strong ego that leaves him susceptible to overtures from the opposition.  Morris’ opponent is a more seasoned Democrat, a representative of the status quo, while Morris (much like President Obama) has been anointed as the symbol of hope and change.   Stephen has truly bought into Morris’ image and thinks he is backing a winner.  As he tells another character, he is “drinking the kool-aid.”  The campaign is moving in the right direction until Stephen gets a call from Tom Duffy, campaign manager for Morris’ opponent.  Duffy tells Stephen that he’d like him to switch sides and that he should attach himself to a winner and look at the big picture.  Stephen ultimately declines, but let the whole thing linger on longer than it should have.  Instead of maintaining an impenetrable silence, he allowed for the possibility of uncertainty and cast Morris in a vulnerable light at a critical hour of the campaign.

While managing the campaign, Stephen crosses paths with a young volunteer named Molly (Evan Rachel Wood, True Blood) whose father happens to be the head of the Democratic National Convention.  They begin an intimate relationship that leads Stephen to discover that he and the governor share more than a similar ideology.  Meanwhile, Stephen tells Morris’ senior campaign manager Paul (Hoffman) about his exchange with Tom Duffy.  His admission is met with an impassioned diatribe on the virtue of loyalty, after which he is quickly dismissed from the campaign.  At first blush it seems that Stephen will be a victim of his own ego, but he still has an ace up his sleeve with Molly – who is carrying a secret that could derail the entire campaign.  It’s ironic that while Paul was reminding Stephen of the importance of loyalty, he had no idea that Stephen had been displaying great loyalty to the governor by cleaning his dirty laundry even while his own position within the campaign grew more and more tenuous.

After Stephen is fired he behaves vengefully and emotionally, almost validating the overture.  But you don’t get to where Stephen has gotten without having a fighter’s mentality.  He goes into survival mode and begins to play the game from within, angling to revive his role in the campaign and to leverage what info he has against the man he once believed in.

Ides of March was a pretty good political drama.  I’ve seen better, but it was a solid movie and an impressive directorial effort from Clooney.  I really feel that he captured the idealistic buzz that hums in a Democratic campaign, the enthusiasm and liberalism.  I chuckled at the Shepard Fairey-inspired prints modeled after Obama’s iconic ‘Hope’ poster, but otherwise I thought the campaign depiction was realistic.  Ryan Gosling continues to prove that he’s one of the best young actors around.  He is earnest and real in everything I’ve ever seen him in, and I am always endeared to his characters, whether he’s a criminal in Drive, a drug addict in Half Nelson, or a lovesick suitor in The Notebook.  Clooney was effective as the duplicitous Morris and of course it’s no difficult task for him to be the charming candidate.  The supporting cast was very good, and I should mention that Jeffrey Wright (Source Code, Cadillac Records) also made an appearance.  Another great actor in a pretty good movie.  I didn’t like the very last scene of the movie, but I enjoyed it overall. 8 out 10.