SAFE HOUSE

A better than i was expecting action-thriller double-cross CIA film starring Denzel Washington as a rogue agent (there's ALWAYS got to be a rogue - a 'turned' agent in these films) and Ryan Reynolds as a bored and restless landlord of a CIA safe house.

He's stationed in South Africa and nothing has happened for an entire year and he spends lots of time on the phone with his French girlfriend. UNTIL Denzel turns himself into the US consulate in order to escape some thugs out to steal the chip he has which contains info about all the corrupt members of the government. Of course, the thugs turn out to be something else and so does Denzel.

In hindsight, the twists were predictable but still very enjoyable. Denzel did not go over the top at all in his role and Reynolds was good; a nice mix of a naive agent and a man of principle.

The film was way too dark for me and i'm not sure if that was intentional or was the theater's cheapness in using less light bulbs. This is true; i read this article about ways that movie theaters engage in to increase their profit since first run and newly released films cost a lot of money for them to rent. And the other criticism was the camera work when there was an action sequence (which happened a lot). The camera was shady and unsteady and the scenes were  shot in this hyper-crystal meth- MTV- drug flashback jerky fashion; maybe that's the vision the young have nowadays because of their constant texting and ipad-ing; but it was too rapid for this senior. I got dizzy and couldnt' even recognize the characters or distinguish who was driving the speeding cars.