Decent Hollywood action film which has the benefit of two of the film capital's more talented stars, a reasonably original premise, and a novel setting (i.e. Cape Town, South Africa). As if to compensate, it develops into what William Goldman calls "Hollywood horseshit" - supposed bad ass Denzel Washington coming back to rescue Ryan Reynolds... really? The real baddies are - gasp - the CIA. And Ryan leaking stuff on the internet because, you know, that's moral. Come on...
But it is a good set up. Safe houses are an interesting concept - and I was looking forward to seeing Denzel do some of this master manipulation his character is supposed to be famed for. We see a glimpse of it but not a lot - the rest of it is mainly running/driving around Cape Town going bang bang, which is quite well done, albeit with one too many easy escapes from tight spots. (I wonder: was there more complex drama between the two lead characters in the original script? Or maybe not - they get out of the safe house awfully fast and it becomes more of a man-on-the-run movie.)
The South African locales are lovely - it's a shame there's not a decent sized South African role in it (seriously - it's packed full of Americans except for Ryan Reynolds' girlfriend, who is French). Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this - I just wanted to love it, and I didn't.
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