safe house movie review

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Common Sense Media Review

Interesting characters clash in extremely violent thriller.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Safe House is an extremely violent action thriller about how a young, optimistic CIA agent deals with a seasoned, cynical renegade. Expect lots of guns, killing, and blood, as well as car crashes, explosions, fights, and even torture (water boarding). There's a minor scene of…

Why Age 17+?

This movie is a non-stop chase, with lots of shooting, deaths, and blood. There

Surprisingly infrequent for this kind of movie; "f--k," "s--t,&qu

The main character's girlfriend follows him into the bathroom, removes her c

The character talks on an Apple iPhone every so often. The Apple logo is visible

Denzel Washington's character enjoys fine wine. Viewers see him drinking it

Any Positive Content?

The movie's main theme is a clash between experience/cynicism and youthful o

Matt Weston is a youthful optimist who's hankering for some action and a cha

Violence & Scariness

This movie is a non-stop chase, with lots of shooting, deaths, and blood. There are explosions, car chases, car crashes, knife fights, strangling, and fist fights. Characters are stabbed with shards of glass. There's an intense scene of water torture (a wet towel is placed over the victim's face, and water is poured on top to simulate the feel of drowning).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Surprisingly infrequent for this kind of movie; "f--k," "s--t," "hell," and "ass" are each used a couple of times.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

The main character's girlfriend follows him into the bathroom, removes her clothes, and climbs into the shower with him. Viewers see kissing, but no graphic nudity.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

The character talks on an Apple iPhone every so often. The Apple logo is visible at least once.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Denzel Washington's character enjoys fine wine. Viewers see him drinking it twice, more to savor the flavor than to get drunk.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

The movie's main theme is a clash between experience/cynicism and youthful optimism. The conclusion is that both ideals can exist at the same time and that it can be detrimental to focus on just one or the other.

Positive Role Models

Matt Weston is a youthful optimist who's hankering for some action and a chance to prove himself. He's a bit reckless, and he eventually has no qualms about killing people in self defense, but he also risks everything in order to do what he thinks is right. His perseverance rubs off on a few other characters.

Parents need to know that Safe House is an extremely violent action thriller about how a young, optimistic CIA agent deals with a seasoned, cynical renegade. Expect lots of guns, killing, and blood, as well as car crashes, explosions, fights, and even torture (water boarding). There's a minor scene of sexuality, but no graphic nudity. Language and drinking are both infrequent (though the former does include both "f--k" and "s--t"), and consumerism is limited to one character's use of an Apple iPhone. Teens may want to see this if they're fans of stars Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds , but it's not age appropriate for younger viewers. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (8)
• Kids say (10)

Based on 8 parent reviews

Too much prolonged violence

What's the story.

Though Matt Weston ( Ryan Reynolds ) works for the CIA, he hasn't seen any action in a year. Stationed in Cape Town, South Africa, he basically watches over a "safe house" -- a fancy apartment where suspects can be held and questioned. Suddenly, a longtime renegade agent, Tobin Frost ( Denzel Washington ), decides to turn himself in at the U.S. Consulate, and he's taken to Weston's safe house. Before long, thugs with guns break in and try to kill everyone in sight. Matt decides that it's time to hit the road and keep moving until help arrives. This isn't an easy task, as the bad guys are everywhere, and the crafty Frost keeps trying to escape. Can Weston figure out what Frost's game is?

Is It Any Good?

A pair of relative newcomers, writer David Guggenheim and director Daniel Espinosa were in charge of SAFE HOUSE, and their inexperience shows. Though the movie has a vicious, inky look, it also has junky, hand-held camerawork, with crazy shaking during action scenes. The script includes such old-time chestnuts as a mole within the CIA and a secret file with the names of all the corrupt agents in the world.

But at the movie's core is the very interesting, opposing relationship between the leads, the seasoned, cynical Tobin Frost and the young, optimistic Matt Weston. Washington and Reynolds genuinely click into their characters and provide several shades of grey between them. They clash in intriguing ways -- sometimes visually, sometimes in dialogue -- and their meeting of minds is by far Safe House 's most interesting element. It's too bad all the "normal" stuff couldn't have been jettisoned in favor of deepening this relationship.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Safe House 's violence . Was it necessary to get the movie's point across? Which scenes were thrilling, and which were disturbing? How does the impact of what you saw here compare to the kind of violence in a comic book action movie?

Tobin believes that no one is to be trusted and that everyone will eventually betray you. Matt has a lot more hope for goodness to prevail. Is there a happy medium between these two attitudes?

Do you think organizations like the CIA are susceptible to corruption in real life? Why might some aspects of working there be exaggerated in the media?

Movie Details

• In theaters : February 10, 2012
• On DVD or streaming : June 5, 2012
• Cast : Denzel Washington , Ryan Reynolds , Vera Farmiga
• Director : Daniel Espinosa
• Inclusion Information : Latino directors, Black actors, Female actors
• Studio : Universal Pictures
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Run time : 115 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : strong violence throughout and some language
• Last updated : March 19, 2024

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Movie Review

Smoldering Superagent Runs...and Keeps on Running

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By Manohla Dargis

• Feb. 9, 2012

At some point in the tense, tough, visceral action movie “Safe House” a side character describes a rogue superagent played by Denzel Washington as “the black Dorian Gray.” Now that’s a movie pitch in waiting. Mr. Washington, or rather the mystery man he plays, Tobin Frost, a former operative for the C.I.A., lets out a short self-aware laugh of a man who isn’t just fielding a compliment but also owning it fully. And why not? He looks good , and he knows it.

Mr. Washington turned 57 in December, but if he’s feeling any of the aches and pains of age, it doesn’t show. “Safe House,” a “Bourne”-esque story about the bad, bad things that agents sometimes do in the name of country and company, puts Mr. Washington through his action-flick paces. He runs, he punches, he runs, he punches and occasionally discharges a gun, either coldly (it’s just business) or with the slight look of disgust of a man cleaning off the bottom of his shoe. Tobin Frost — the name smacks of airport spy fiction — isn’t really the enigma the filmmakers would like you to believe, but Mr. Washington is so good at suggesting deep reserves of cool, moody mystery and smoldering feeling that he keeps you nicely guessing.

Did or didn’t Frost betray his country is the question that the credited screenwriter David Guggenheim and Daniel Espinosa, the young, up-and-coming Swedish director, put into nimble play almost as soon as “Safe House” gets going. And, after some low-key place setting in Cape Town, where Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds), an untested C.I.A. agent, is watching over a company safe house, the movie takes off like a shot. Frost, having just snaked his way through the city, dodging a gun-toting, shooting horde, and setting citizens scrambling every which way, has slipped into the American Embassy and, after announcing his identity, been swept away by agents to the safe house for debriefing.

Like a lot of contemporary action directors Mr. Espinosa tends to cut among several scenes, switching not simply between two scenes but also upward of four. In lesser hands this kind of editing scheme can devolve into visual and narrative chaos, as the filmmaker whiplashes from one location to another, sometimes for no apparent reason. Working with the editor Richard Pearson, whose credits include “The Bourne Supremacy,” Mr. Espinosa maintains a visually coherent, narratively rational sense of time and space no matter how fast the story shifts about, which it does with increasing speed when that same heavily armed horde that had been chasing Frost breaches the safe house, slaughtering most of the American operatives and sending Frost and Weston running.

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Safe House Reviews

Although occasionally exciting, there’s a pointed lack of gamesmanship in the events for a yarn involving spies, coupled with a lackluster quality that fails to leave an impression.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 23, 2023

I had a great time with “Safe House”, and I don’t penalize it for aiming at a specific mark and hitting it.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 25, 2022

Why do scripters even try to hide the identity of the villain until the end? Given the obviousness in these films, they might as well include a character named Professor Plum, usually found brandishing a lead pipe in the conservatory, and be done with it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 13, 2021

As for the action and choreographed violence, perhaps the number two reason for purchasing a ticket this weekend, again Safe House delivers adequately.

Full Review | Apr 23, 2021

The South African location, Denzel Washington's duplicitous dialogue, and the intense car chases help to coax viewers into forgetting about the humdrum plot.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Dec 2, 2020

Nothing you haven't seen before, "Safe House" is lightning-fast, and full of shootouts, brutal fistfights, and chase scenes.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jul 11, 2020

The end product resembles a Catherine wheel: a loud, bright firework that goes nowhere, spinning in circles until long after everyone stopped caring.

Full Review | Feb 14, 2020

Probably so, it was fun and does what it does pretty well. Don't go in looking for a transcendent experience of film cause that's not what it is supposed to do.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Jan 11, 2020

Reynolds is the star of the film, but because he's the junior actor, playing the rookie character, he's given even less to work with. Racing from pillar to post, he just keeps his head down...

Full Review | Jul 29, 2019

Plays it safe at every turn, and the result is a film that just can't compete with its own clear influences.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 8, 2019

While blood spills messily, the conspiracy is unwrapped neatly and nothing is left to chance.

Full Review | Jan 26, 2019

This is a film filled with lines like, "Everyone betrays everyone." But the banality of those words almost disappears when Denzel Washington utters them.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 4, 2019

Spends most of its 117-minute running time much like its central characters -- tearing madly around, making a lot of noise and not really getting very far.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 13, 2018

[It's] undeniably engaging and extremely well acted.

Full Review | Nov 10, 2018

Reynolds is great, too, but the film truly belongs to Washington as the gruff, clever bad guy you'll end up rooting for.

Full Review | Nov 21, 2017

[Daniel] Espinosa thrillingly weaves impossible situation into impossible situation, maneuvering his players like a chess game on steroids to an ending that should be satisfying to all. He's a master and we're sure to hear more from him.

Full Review | Sep 18, 2017

Though it's not a premise we haven't seen played out before on the silver screen, Safe House is a movie that sucks you in, guts you, and spits you out at the end.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Sep 8, 2017

Safe House wasn't bad, it just wasn't new, and if a movie is involving rogue agents, it needs to meet its characterization with a plot that keeps us guessing.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Aug 21, 2017

[Safe House] is utterly predictable stuff, in case you haven't already figured that out by now.

Full Review | Aug 14, 2017

Everybody fights and everybody lies in a thriller that tries to glamorize spies while demonizing their profession.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 30, 2012

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A Spy On The Run, But Playing It Too 'Safe'

Ian Buckwalter

Cold and Calculating: Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington), a deadly CIA operative turned one-man army, placidly waits for trouble to come to him in Safe House . Universal Pictures hide caption

Cold and Calculating: Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington), a deadly CIA operative turned one-man army, placidly waits for trouble to come to him in Safe House .

• Director: Daniel Espinosa
• Genre: Action, Thriller
• Running Time: 115 minutes

Rated R for strong violence throughout and some language

With: Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson, Sam Shepard

Watch Clips

'Houseguest'

Credit: Universal Pictures

'Frost Makes His Move'

'My Real Job'

It was only a matter of time before someone made a Tony Scott movie without Tony Scott.

The director's frequent collaborations with Denzel Washington are guilty-pleasure entertainments — particularly the dark exploitation-lite of 2004's Man on Fire -- but they're mostly built on a familiar template. Washington's always playing a cool-under-pressure character who's asked to go above and beyond with life and death on the line, and the camera's always following the action with grainy photography and claustrophobically jittery close-ups. It's not a difficult manual to decipher — and with Safe House , Swedish director Daniel Espinosa follows the Scott-Washington playbook with a tedious fidelity.

As in Man on Fire , Washington plays a former CIA operative who's long since left the agency. But instead of the bitter drunk of that film, Safe House 's Tobin Frost is a man still in top form, both physically and in his ability to psychologically manipulate those around him. Espinosa puts his skills on display in a lengthy opening action sequence in which he is pursued around Cape Town, South Africa, by a team of mercenaries.

Frost, who's been making his living off the grid as a spy-for-hire since going AWOL from the CIA, has just scored a trove of documents detailing intelligence secrets and government scandals from around the world when the chase begins; the director choreographs the sequence to neatly introduce Frost's skills, then caps it by quite literally introducing the character: He ducks into the American consulate, announcing that "My name is Tobin Frost."

The CIA pulls him out of the consulate, taking him for questioning to a safe house watched over by Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds), a young field agent paying his dues in this dull assignment and hoping for bigger and better things. The opportunity to prove his mettle arrives with the extraction team and their fugitive, who has been brought here for some "enhanced interrogation."

He's so cool under pressure (Frosty, get it?) that he lectures the team on the insufficient thread count of the towels they're about to use to waterboard him. Weston, acting as audience proxy, is appropriately horrified at the torture he's witnessing, but it's cut short when the safe house turns out to be not so safe. He and Frost escape and head out on the lam together.

Inexperienced field agent Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) prepares to fend off an attack on his CIA safe house in Cape Town, South Africa. Universal Pictures hide caption

Espinosa is perfectly capable, and the action packs plenty of excitement, even if the direction lacks the visual innovation that might provide unexpected jolts. Washington and Reynolds are excellent together, in much the same vein as Washington and Ethan Hawke in Training Day or Washington and Chris Pine in Unstoppable (the latter another Scott-Washington picture). Sensing the pattern?

He's done the wise mentor to the hot-headed but ambitious youth thing before, but Washington's magnetic intensity and unassailably cool air have always set him apart from most other action stars, and he's as impossible to dislike here as ever. Reynolds, meanwhile, makes this one of those periodic performances that reminds us he's capable of being an excellent actor; if only he'd quit making such awful role choices.

But their performances can't save Safe House from its boilerplate-thriller bones. There's plenty of inexplicably poor decision-making on the part of the characters just to move the plot forward. And the worst is writer David Guggenheim's insistence on a cheap bait-and-switch so blatantly obvious that the second half of the film becomes a tedious wait for a plot twist everyone will have seen coming half an hour out.

In telegraphing every move, and by painting so rigorously by the numbers, the film takes no risks at all. Which I suppose makes Safe House true to its title — but safety doesn't exactly put the thrills in a thriller.

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Safe house: film review.

Swedish director Daniel Espinosa's action-thriller starring Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds is a two-hour cat-and-mouse game with a few brief breaks to catch its breath.

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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Safe House Ryan Reynolds - H 2012

Essentially a two-hour chase with a few brief breaks to catch its breath, Safe House is an elemental cat-and-mouse game elaborated to the point of diminishing returns. Terse and understated, this is a spy vs. spy tale designed to minimize talk and maximize action, not at all a bad thing in movies but over-worked to near-exhaustion here. Star names of Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds will assure a robust opening for this muscular winter attraction, the stripped-down simplicity of which should play particularly well overseas.

PHOTOS: Hollywood’s 10 Highest-Grossing Actors

David Guggenheim ‘s nuts-and-bolts screenplay is mainly about one thing: A renegade CIA agent has information some of the gang back in Washington, D.C. might not want out there, so it comes down to their relentlessness versus his resourcefulness. Such a premise can be enough if the filmmaker in charge is a master of suspenseful minutia, a born storyteller capable of elaborating any small situation into a captivating tale, a wizard with images and of stretching a yarn to just before the breaking point.

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Swedish director Daniel Espinosa ( Snabba Cash ) is not on that level–not yet, anyway–although the style he employs to follows the far-ranging action—something resembling a surveillance camera surreptitiously eavesdropping on movements and incidents not meant to be witnessed—is entirely apt for the subject at hand. Especially when the action is outdoors and on the street, the slightly stylized coverage is often managed from above, where a permanent camera might plausibly be positioned, a strategy that contributes a fresh layer of visual pungency.

VIDEO: Denzel Washington Goes Rogue in ‘Safe House’ Trailer 

Having been off the grid, as they say, for a decade, veteran agent Tobin Frost (Washington) is considered “one of the most notorious traitors we’ve got,” according to CIA big shot Harlan Whitford ( Sam Shepard ); he “turned” years ago and has been selling damaging information ever since. When Tobin abruptly decides to turn himself in, he is remanded to the care of agency novice Matt Weston (Reynolds), who’s been languishing in Cape Town, South Africa, waiting for a plum assignment; he’s got one now.

Given his notoriety, Tobin’s got some tough and well-armed guys after him wherever he goes, perhaps especially now because he’s got a tiny file containing explosive info that he’s embedded under his skin. Be they terrorists, mercenaries or CIA ops, his pursuers force Tobin and Matt out of their safe house and keep gunning for them at regular intervals thereafter, which means very few minutes of Safe House ever go by with an exchange of fire or muscle power.

STORY: Scarlett Johansson, Denzel Washington Win Germany’s Golden Camera

Hovering distantly in the background is the contrast between Tobin’s worldly cynicism and Matt’s hitherto untested optimistic view of how life should operate. In the nasty world of ever-present assassins and the CIA, which complicates things further by sending two Langley operatives ( Vera Farmiga and Brenda Gleeson ) into the field after them, the naïve student has to catch up to reality but fast, which he does as the besieged men carefully make their way from the city to a township and, finally, to an isolated ranch for a final showdown.

With his charisma doing most of the work to envelop his character with the requisite alluring mystery, Washington nicely combines a world-weariness with a persistent alertness to the moment, the latter a constant requisite if Tobin is to survive yet another day. Reynolds does seem very green by comparison, and one can hardly blame him for wishing he could just get back together with his comely blond girlfriend ( Nora Arnezeder ) in Paris, but being thrown into some extremely intense mano a mano combat situations seems to be just the ticket to make a man out of him. Dramatically, the film hangs together well enough but the repetitive nature of the action and lack of stylistic shadings and nuance ultimately prove rather grinding.

The relatively unfamiliar Cape Town and vicinity locations add a measure of fresh visual interest, while Oliver Wood , who shot the first two Bourne installments, has worked with Espinosa to fashion an even more rough-and-ready style here, abetted in its grunginess by production designer Brigitte Broch.

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Safe House Review

24 Feb 2012

114 minutes

Just by accepting a part with the thumbnail description ‘rogue CIA agent’, Denzel Washington reveals he’s more or less coasting through Safe House. With earnest, busy, likable, hardworking plodder Ryan Reynolds to play off, Washington doesn’t need to engage more than half of his abilities to walk away with the film on sheer charisma, a nice line in superior attitude (Frost warns the debriefing team who are about to waterboard him that they’re using the wrong towels) and a few fast moves (an escape on foot across the tin roofs of township shacks). Without regular collaborator Tony Scott at the helm (Daniel Espinosa has made a few Swedish films, but this is his English-language debut), the star Washington doesn’t even seem to break a sweat as this okay Bourne-type spy thriller dashes between plot points on picturesque yet gritty South African locations.

This type of cynical, implausible action picture works best if it moves too fast to follow, but here pauses to develop character — as rookie Matt Weston learns life lessons from the veteran agent such as it’s difficult to be a spy and have a relationship — let the audience catch up and figure out way too early where it’s going. Is “the legendary Tobin Frost” really the all-round bad guy and betrayer that his CIA apprehend-and-interrogate file makes him out to be? Which of the suited analysts back in Washington — you get a choice of Sam Shepard behind a desk, Vera Farmiga wasted in yet another end-of-a-phone-line role and Brendan Gleeson as hefty yet canny slob — will turn out to be less than 100 per cent good? What’s on the secret file handed over by guest star Liam Cunningham which Frost carries about in a pellet injected into his midriff?

It’s an undemanding, entertaining movie — a lot like a Steven Seagal direct-to-DVD picture in concept, but with lead actors who care enough to take it all seriously, inventive use of South African locations (a chase through one of those old World Cup soccer stadiums), and an array

of solid-to-outstanding supporting players (rising Joel Kinnaman gets to have a brutal fight with Reynolds, veteran Ruben Blades forges a passport).

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Safe House review

Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds star in the action-packed thriller, Safe House. Here’s Ryan’s review…

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Two characters who don’t get along are forced into an uneasy alliance by a common enemy. It’s a familiar thriller plot, and in many ways, the star-laden Safe House is as generic a thriller as they come.

In this instance, it’s Ryan Reynolds’ low-ranking CIA operative and Denzel Washington’s rogue veteran agent who are thrown together after a violent shoot-out. Denzel plays Tobin Frost, whose theft of sensitive government data has made him the target of an army of anonymous, heavily-armed villains, and when Frost’s brief detention at a CIA safe house run by rookie agent Matt Weston (Reynolds) is gate crashed by the bad guys on his trail, the pair barely escape with their lives.

At first determined to return Frost to the CIA for interrogation, Weston gradually begins to wonder who the villains on his trail are working for, and whether his own bosses can really be trusted.

While it’s true that Safe House’ s plot is formulaic, there are two things which make the movie worth a second look: first, the acting abilities of Washington and Reynolds, and second, Swedish filmmaker Daniel Espinosa’s eye-catching, exhilarating direction.

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As is often the case in action thrillers, the race to keep the plot moving along means that Safe House ’s characters are thinly drawn at best. Washington and Reynolds, are required, therefore, to bring all the depth to their roles they can, while at the same time trading punches, dodging bullets, and crashing cars. And as Training Day and American Gangster proved, Washington’s excellent at playing dark characters, even though his acting career is filled overwhelmingly with more wholesome, heroic protagonists.

Washington lends some much-needed dramatic heft to Tobin Frost, while Reynolds brings some of the vulnerability and charm he displayed in Buried to his initially wet-behind-the-ears agent ( Buried was proof that nobody in Hollywood can play bruised and exhausted better than Reynolds).

The pair’s contribution to Safe House can’t be underestimated – without their charisma and chemistry, we’d probably be left with another low-energy thriller like the disappointing Man On A Ledge earlier this year.

It’s director Daniel Espinosa who’s the real revelation here, though. He brings real weight and friction to Safe House ’s numerous car chases and fights, which are gritty and, on occasion, downright nasty. Sure, the wobbling cameras and urgent editing is from the post- Bourne school of filmmaking, but Espinosa has a way of framing his sequences and dragging his camera around that is uniquely his.

Unlike some action movies, it’s possible to tell who’s hitting or shooting who in these scenes, and as frantic as the action gets, it’s always clear where one character is in relation to another – an apparently simple talent that even Hollywood’s most well-paid directors sometimes appear to lack.

Ably supported by some excellent sound design and sterling work from cinematographer Oliver Wood, Espinosa brings real style and verve to Safe House ’s moments of violence. One slow-motion crash through a window – something we’ve all seen more times than we’d care to count – is framed and presented in a manner that borders on the breath-taking.

Safe House ’s South African locations also provide some memorable texture and colour, and it’s refreshing to see an action thriller that uses its setting as a natural backdrop rather than as an exotic cultural cliché. For an example of a movie that does the opposite, look again at Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, which felt the need to play communist marching music whenever the action cut to Russia, accordions when it cut to Paris, or bagpipes when it cut to Scotland. (I made the last two up, but I think you get the point I’m trying to make.)

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Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson, Sam Shepard and Liam Cunningham are among a supporting cast of somewhat flimsy government agent archetypes, who you’ll recognise in an instant. There’s a furtive one who talks gruffly in the corner of crowded pubs, an older one who spends most of the film staring at graphics on a computer screen, and an even older one who threatens people from behind a mahogany desk while an American flag looms up in the background. Everyone owns an expensive mobile phone, and drives around in a jet-black four-wheel-drive Mercedes.

Ultimately, the familiarity of Safe House ’s plot is what detains it from brilliance, or at least four-star very-goodness. Everyone, from the supporting players (including Robert Patrick, who’s barely recognisable from his T2 days, bless him) up to the simmering Denzel Washington himself, puts in lots of effort and some great work, and writer David Guggenheim pens one or two piquant lines of dialogue for them. But the lack of any genuine surprises, rug-pull moments or “Blimey, I didn’t see that one coming” turns of fortune ultimately hold Safe House back.

For director Daniel Espinosa, though, Safe House is a more than promising Hollywood debut. From the most familiar of cloth, he’s tailored a thriller that is far more stylish, good-looking and hard-hitting than it had any right to be, and on that basis alone, I’m anxious to see what he makes next.

Ryan Lambie

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Time Out says

Elevated above the norm by Swedish director Daniel Espinosa ’s kinetic visuals, a smart script by David Guggenheim and Denzel Washington ’s charismatic intelligence, this exciting spy thriller throws together idealistic rookie Matt Weston ( Ryan Reynolds ) and ‘rogue’ CIA agent Tobin Frost (Washington). When Frost surrenders to the US Embassy in South Africa, Weston’s bosses back at Langley have no time to ponder his twisted motives. Minutes after Frost is transferred to Weston’s ‘safe house’ for interrogation, the place is overrun by mercenaries, forcing him and his ‘house guest’ to go on the run. But who should Weston trust: sociopath Frost or his superiors?

The rest is one long, exhausting chase scene, with occasional breaks for slightly stilted dialogue, taking in the Green Point football stadium, the labyrinthine Langa Township, shootouts, and mind-games by Frost. While director Espinosa hones in on the ambiguous battle between Weston’s idealism and Frost’s cynicism, British cinematographer Oliver Wood – who filmed the last two Bourne movies – shoots the hell out of everything.

Release Details

• Release date: Friday 24 February 2012
• Duration: 115 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: Daniel Espinosa
• Ryan Reynolds
• Denzel Washington
• Vera Farmiga

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Daniel Espinosa

Relativity Media

Universal Pictures

Daniel Espinosa

Relativity Media

Universal Pictures

R

115 Minutes

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Denzel washington, ryan reynolds, vera farmiga, brendan gleeson, sam shepard, ruben blades, nora arnezeder, robert patrick, latest stories, ryan reynolds reflects on accidentally hitting denzel washington, ryan reynolds really hit denzel washington twice filming safe house, denzel washington doesn't know what happened to safe house 2, 'safe house' sequel in development - will washington & reynolds return, weekend box office wrap up: march 25th, 2012, weekend box office wrap up: march 4th, 2012, weekend box office wrap up: february 19th, 2012, related titles.

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Metacritic reviews

• 78 Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov Director Espinosa stages the endless action with a tremendous flair that recalls John Woo's grittier moments, and cinematographer Oliver Wood, who shot Woo's finest Hollywood moment, "Face/Off," gives the whole violent show a downright brackish look that borders on the sublime.
• 67 Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman Compared with a superior potboiler like "Salt," which messed with your brain in entertainingly far-fetched ways, Safe House is action-movie porridge gussied up into a less-clever-than-it-seems mystery.
• 60 Village Voice Village Voice [A] scattered but not totally disagreeable CIA conspiracy thriller.
• 60 Arizona Republic Bill Goodykoontz Arizona Republic Bill Goodykoontz Too often Washington is made to simply sit and observe -- which is not a fatal mistake because he is such a good actor that even then he's worth watching. Worse, though, at times he's gone altogether. That's not the only flaw in the fairly straightforward thriller, but it's the biggest.
• 58 The A.V. Club Nathan Rabin The A.V. Club Nathan Rabin Safe House does altogether too good a job establishing Washington as a seemingly unbeatable adversary: He brings so much gravity to his role that Reynolds seems hopelessly overmatched.
• 50 Variety Justin Chang Variety Justin Chang In contrast with the fragmented kineticism of Paul Greengrass' "Bourne" movies, there's no existential dimension to the shattered-glass aesthetic here; it's just raw, chaotic action, inelegantly shot and staged but no less unnerving for it.
• 50 The Hollywood Reporter Todd McCarthy The Hollywood Reporter Todd McCarthy Terse and understated, this is a spy vs. spy tale designed to minimize talk and maximize action, not at all a bad thing in movies but over-worked to near-exhaustion here.
• 50 ReelViews James Berardinelli ReelViews James Berardinelli The pacing is uneven, the frenetic action is rarely suspenseful, the dialogue is neither witty nor intelligent, and the anticlimactic endgame drags out to an improbable conclusion.
• 50 Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman Crash. Kick. Stab. Punch. Talk (briefly). Smash. Chase. Screech. Shoot. Mumble. That's the wearying pattern of Safe House. Had "think" been an action verb, the movie might have risen above the knee-jerk excitement of the second-tier, "Bourne"-style spy thriller. But it never does.
• 50 Chicago Reader Chicago Reader Espinosa never conveys any sort of perspective on the material, as Scott does through his obsessive attention to production detail; the stylization feels empty, distracting from whatever simple pleasures the routine plot (involving double agents and stolen microchips) might have delivered.
• See all 36 reviews on Metacritic.com
• See all external reviews for Safe House

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• DVD & Streaming
• Action/Adventure , Drama , Mystery/Suspense

Content Caution

In Theaters

• February 10, 2012
• Denzel Washington as Tobin Frost; Ryan Reynolds as Matt Weston; Vera Farmiga as Catherine Linklater; Brendan Gleeson as David Barlow; Sam Shepard as Harlan Whitford; Rubén Blades as Carlos Villar; Nora Arnezeder as Ana Moreau

Home Release Date

• June 5, 2012
• Daniel Espinosa

Distributor

• Universal Pictures

Positive Elements   |   Spiritual Elements   |   Sexual & Romantic Content   |   Violent Content   |   Crude or Profane Language   |   Drug & Alcohol Content   |   Other Noteworthy Elements   | Conclusion

Movie Review

Matt Weston thought the CIA would be more exciting. How could he not? What with movies about the agency chock-full of trench coats, hidden cameras, foggy rendezvous points and cars with ejector seats. But not everyone gets to go all cloak and dagger right out of CIA school. You gotta work your way up to that big-screen stuff. The first rung on Matt’s career ladder? Being, essentially, a house sitter.

He’s in charge of watching one of the CIA’s many safe houses—places of refuge all around the world where agents can scramble to when things get prickly, or they can quietly and efficiently interrogate the occasional captive.

Thing is, these safe houses don’t get used as much as you might think. So Matt quietly and efficiently collects the mail and tidies the place up a bit. Then he passes the time mainly by throwing a tennis ball against a bare wall, hoping for something to happen. Anything.

Hasn’t Matt heard the old adage, “Be careful what you wish for”?

After a full year of being posted at a safe house in Cape Town, South Africa, Matt finally receives his first prison—, er, guest. Agents tote in Tobin Frost, a one-time CIA spook who now sells state secrets to the highest bidder. He was practically a legend when he was with the CIA—a master manipulator, it was whispered—and his reputation’s only gotten bigger since. The guy could probably sell timeshares in Guantanamo.

But his jail—, er, hosts, aren’t planning on falling for any of his mind tricks this time. They know Tobin’s got something very valuable stashed away, and they’re determined to get it out of him one way or another.

As Matt watches, they begin to waterboard Tobin.

There’s a disturbance outside. Intruders invade the safe house and begin blasting the agents. Pretty soon, the only folks inside who are still alive are Matt, Tobin and the killers.

Tobin, still tied up from the waterboarding session, turns to Matt.

“You are responsible for your houseguest,” he says. “I am your houseguest.”

It’s not exactly protocol for a low-level agent to steal away with a duplicitous and dangerous turncoat. But this isn’t exactly a typical situation. And so the two charge out into the streets, with Matt perhaps wondering if maybe there shouldn’t be quite so much excitement in his new CIA job.

Positive Elements

Thou shalt not lie.

That’s what the Bible tells us, but most of the folks we see in Safe House break that commandment every day—every hour—as part of their jobs. They take advantage, Tobin says, of “people’s desire to believe.”

Most of us understand that in the service of one’s country, certain rules change, certain commandments seem to shift. Murder , for instance, isn’t the word we use for what happens when soldiers shoot to kill. And lie doesn’t mean quite the same thing while deep undercover in Tehran as it does when you’ve scarfed the last cookie from the cookie jar. We have come to pragmatically understand the need for intelligence gathering, and sometimes gathering that intelligence involves (we assume) crossing into (otherwise) unethical territory.

But while all that may be true, Safe House tells us there’s still a cost involved. Tobin tells Matt that the more you lie, the easier it becomes—and that if you lie to everyone long enough you lose sight of the truth altogether. And Tobin—jaded, on-the-run Tobin—seems to be Exhibit A.

But Tobin finds in Matt an agent who’s not been corrupted by the lies yet—an agent who still wants to do the right thing. When circumstances force Matt to flee, he meets his girlfriend one last time and tells her the real reason he’s in South Africa. She’s furious at having been lied to, and Matt understands. He still gives her a wad of cash and tells her to flee—for her own safety. Simultaneously, even when it seems that Tobin’s pursuers have CIA connections—meaning that someone in Matt’s own agency is trying to kill them both—Matt tries to trust the agency, following orders as best he can.

[ Spoiler Warning ] Matt’s desire to do the right thing impresses Tobin, and he entrusts Matt with the information he’s been carrying—a list of crooked agents in a number of worldwide spy organizations. “Be better than me,” he urges Matt. “Be better than me.”

And Matt is. Despite destroying his career and putting his life from that point forward in serious jeopardy, he releases the list—revealing an avalanche of corruption that never would’ve surfaced otherwise. Is it a disaster for the agencies involved? Yes. Would it have been wise to go about fixing the problem another way? Perhaps. But in a business full of (necessary) lies, Matt never loses sight of the importance of the truth—and there’s something honorable about that.

Spiritual Elements

The film closes with the Jay-Z/Kanye West song “No Church in the Wild,” which contains a number of references to religion, none of them particularly positive. “We formed a new religion,” raps West, for instance. “No sins as long as there’s permission.”

Sexual & Romantic Content

Matt and his girlfriend are shown in the shower together. We see the woman’s back. We also see them in their underwear. As they talk at a café, she asks whether he’d like to get back in bed with her. He says he’d love to, but he’s got to go to work. The two kiss.

Tobin wonders aloud whether Matt’s main squeeze is a girl or a guy. But “I don’t judge,” he tells Matt.

There are crass sexual references on “No Church in the Wild.”

Violent Content

For an organization that prides itself on discretion, the CIA can’t be happy about how things go down here. There are scads of shoot-outs, fistfights, car chases and explosions—all of which are bound to raise participants’ profiles.

Tobin shoots and kills several folks who mean him harm. He snaps the neck of one. He sticks a barrel in Matt’s ear, but before he pulls the trigger shifts his aim to the concrete wall behind Matt’s head. (The close-proximity blast makes Matt’s ear bleed.)

A double-dealing MI6 agent gets shot in a car. (We see the bullet hole in his forehead and bright-red blood spattered on the broken windshield.) A Tobin doppelgänger is gunned down by assassins. A man making a false ID for Tobin is killed, along with his innocent family.

Matt and Tobin beat up (and possibly kill) several security guards. Soccer fans, hearing gunshots, panic and stampede, barreling over at least one helpless woman. Matt strangles a man to death. Two people fight in the midst of broken glass, using large shards as vicious weapons. Countless souls are gunned down—often polished off with a gratuitous bullet to the brain after already absorbing loads of lead. Matt and his pursuers embark on a lengthy and dangerous car chase, involving crash after crash after crash. Tobin and Matt fight in a moving car. A car blows up. Grenades are thrown. People fall through roofs.

Tobin relates a story of how he killed an innocent man so the CIA could plant a new guy in his sensitive position. “Don’t kill innocent people, Matthew,” Tobin warns.

A CIA agent seems prepared to use a knife to torture a prisoner. I’ve already mentioned that agents waterboard Tobin.

Crude or Profane Language

One f-word in dialogue, another rapped on “No Church in the Wild.” We hear four or five s-words and six or seven uses of “h‑‑‑.” Other profanity includes “d‑‑n” and “a‑‑.”

Drug & Alcohol Content

Tobin is a wine connoisseur. He’s impressed when an MI6 agent serves him a 40-year-old varietal, and he gushes over the vintage given to him by a friend. “You even let it breathe,” he says, and the two reminisce about how, once upon a time, a bottle of cheap liquor was all they’d needed to be happy.

We see others imbibe whiskey and beer. We learn that Matt’s parents and sister died in a car crash—triggered by his father driving while under the influence.

Other Noteworthy Elements

“People don’t want the truth anymore, Matt,” Tobin says. “It’s messy. It keeps people up at night.”

It’s a pretty interesting dichotomy in the confines of Safe House . Here we have an agency tasked with uncovering uncomfortable truths … but naturally keeps its own equally uncomfortable secrets quite hidden. The bad guys aren’t altogether evil here—they don’t cackle maniacally in their secret lairs as they inspect their zombie armies. No, these villains are simply folks who’ve made so many compromises they kinda forgot what right and wrong are. And through Tobin we’re shown what it all means. As he said, when you lie for a living you can forget what the truth is. When you kill for a living you can lose sight of the preciousness of life.

That makes Safe House, in something of a backdoor sort of way, a repudiation of moral relativism. But it doesn’t make it safe .

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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With his debut Swedish-language feature Snabba Cash , Daniel Espinosa introduced himself as a foreign director perfectly capable of aping Tony Scott -style Hollywood action; the film's uniqueness was the setting and the language, not the style or the story. So for his debut English-language feature Safe House he's making exactly that kind of movie again, but with Hollywood stars and a threadbare script that takes the novelty away entirely. Leaving the audience in the dark for the sake of a central mystery that never gets interesting, Safe House is less a thriller than an experiment in confusion, trying to rile up the audience by stranding them in scenes they don't understand, over and over until the climax mercifully sets us free.

The central conceit, of a lone, low-level CIA operative ( Ryan Reynolds ) detaining a dangerous rogue agent ( Denzel Washington ), is rock solid. Reynolds tamps down his sassy persona to play a goody two-shoes striver completely at sea, and while Washington is playing a more familiar "dangerous" type of character (when was the last time he seemed legitimately challenged by a role?), he's at least still very, very good at playing this guy. Reynolds' Matt Weston, stuck in a dead-end CIA post manning a safe house in Cape Town, South Africa, rightly recognizes it's his big break when the hotly pursued Tobin Frost is brought into his house, then swiftly broken out by a band of anonymous thugs. But Matt is also terrified, and Reynolds nicely balances his constant fear and lack of ideas with a sense that this guy is worth rooting for anyway. In the rare scenes where he and Frost communicate with anything other than mind games, or the even rarer action scene executed well, Matt's green, figure-this-out-as-I-go-along attitude raises the stakes, especially when pitched against the one-step-ahead Frost.

But then there's nearly every other action scene, all of them plunging the characters into some location with no geographical logic to help us make sense of it. Even the opening action sequence, in which we meet Frost as he's pursued by some nameless baddies, is a muddle; we don't know him and we don't know them, and unable to even follow the action, the audience is lost five minutes into the film. Espinosa's shaky, kinetic camera is a familiar action movie trope by now, but rarely has it been accompanied by such a lack of geography, so that even the relatively contained safe house constantly reveals new hallways or rooms; it's crucial in a closed-in, intense scene like that to understand where the characters are in relation to each other, and Espinosa never pulls that off. It feels like even more of a missed opportunity later on, when Frost and Weston are both outrunning the same bad guys through the slums, crashing into living rooms and skittering over tin roofs. Still having no idea who these villains are at this late point in the story, it's easy to doze off, remembering the chase scene in Fast Five with a similar slum setting that pulled it off infinitely better.

The one exception is a slower, more deliberate chase scene that happens at a soccer stadium, Espinosa cutting between the riled-up football fans and Weston and Frost as they cat-and-mouse their way through a location that's familiar enough to make sense. By then we know Weston and Frost and how they operate, and the scene takes advantage of its stars and the potential of its location beautifully; that and a late scene featuring Snabba Cash 's own Joel Kinnaman in a brief role are the best indications that Espinosa does in fact have better work ahead of him.

In addition to Kinnaman, smaller supporting roles are filled out by Brendan Gleeson and Vera Farmiga , both of them given the thankless task of standing in CIA Headquarters and spouting off mountains of exposition while all the good action happens elsewhere. Those arduous exposition scenes are the surest signs that David Guggenheim's script is taking too many shortcuts, though the fact that the movie's MacGuffin-- a microchip containing valuable blah blah blah-- winds up discussed in constant detail is a major misstep too. With Espinosa and Guggenheim both being such newcomers, Safe House does show some potential-- but the pile of missed opportunities make you wish they'd cut their teeth somewhere else, and let Reynolds and Washington go at each other in a movie that could support them better.

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The Ending Of Safe House Explained

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If you've ever scoured HBO Max looking for a solid, yet underrated, thriller , there's a good chance you've already come across Safe House . The 2012 movie sees Ryan Reynolds playing rookie CIA agent Matt Weston. At the beginning of the film, Weston is living a relatively quiet life managing a safe house in Cape Town, South Africa. He's unsatisfied with his assignment, as he feels it's not giving him the opportunity to move forward in his career.

Everything changes when Weston meets former CIA agent turned international criminal Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington). Frost arrives at Weston's safe house after surrendering himself to the Americans to avoid being killed by a group of mercenaries who have been hot on his trail. However, the mercenaries discover his location and destroy the safe house, forcing Weston and Frost to go on the run.

Weston is getting an assist from his supervisor, David Barlow (Brendan Gleeson), as well as fellow senior agent Catherine Linklater (Vera Farmiga). They are not only trying to determine why Frost set up a meeting with a former MI6 agent before he turned himself over, but also why he's now being hounded by this mysterious group of mercenaries. Furthermore, Linklater is suspicious of Weston and concerned that he might be at risk of defecting.

As his allegiance is questioned and his mission becomes more and more dangerous, Weston begins to wonder where the truth of the whole situation actually lies. Here's how this harrowing story comes to an end.

Frost pushes Weston to question his line of work

Throughout their time together, Frost continuously tries to convince Weston to not trust his superiors at the CIA. He notes that the mercenaries knew how to find his safe house, which likely means they were tipped off by someone inside the agency. This is later confirmed when Weston interrogates one of the mercenaries.

Frost also gives Weston a first-hand account of how duplicitous the higher-ups at the CIA can be. He tells him a story about how, when he was a young agent, he was deceived into murdering an innocent man by one of his superiors. More disturbing is Frost's admission that he let the deception slide and continued working for the CIA. He explains, "You practice something for a long time, you get good at it. You tell a hundred lies a day, it sounds like the truth." 

Frost's warnings aren't just about the specific situation they're currently in. He's also giving Weston a preview of what will happen to him if he continues to advance in the CIA.

By the time the two are en route to the next safe house, Weston has clearly internalized Frost's words. When they arrive, he pulls a gun on the agent running the safe house. This leads to a bloody fight that leaves the agent dead and Weston severely injured.

In the aftermath of the fight, Weston demands to know what Frost did that led to him being hunted by both the CIA and a group of mercenaries. Frost reveals that he acquired a microchip loaded with files detailing massive corruption in every major intelligence agency in the world. Including, of course, the CIA.

Barlow's true intentions are revealed

Meanwhile, both Barlow and Linklater have arrived in South Africa to investigate the situation. Linklater continues to be highly suspicious of Weston. Even though Barlow maintains that his protege isn't working with Frost, the mounting evidence in front of Linklater's face makes it hard for her to ignore the feeling that something isn't right. As it turns out, she is correct to be suspicious. However, Weston isn't the person she should be worried about.

While they are on their way to rendezvous with Weston at the safe house, Linklater learns about the microchip of sensitive information that Frost got his hands on. When she tells Barlow, he responds by shooting and killing her. Frost was correct about the mercenaries coming from someone inside the CIA. That someone is Barlow, who knows that there is ruinous information about him on that microchip.

Back at the safe house, Weston wakes up after passing out from his injuries. Frost is gone and Barlow is now by his side. After putting together all the clues, Weston knows that Barlow is behind everything. When confronted, Barlow confesses that he "did something [I'm] not proud of" and is now going to great lengths to keep it hidden.

Barlow's betrayal is a literal manifestation of Frost's earlier warnings about living a life of lies and deception. Weston now understands just how insidious it all is. Even after Barlow offers him the promotion he had previously been eager for, his feelings about his mentor and the CIA have soured.

Weston realizes what is truly important to him

Frost arrives and a shootout ensues. Although Frost kills Barlow's mercenaries, he's fatally wounded in the process. Before Barlow has the chance to finish Frost off, Weston stumbles out of bed and shoots his former mentor.

Back in the US, Weston files a report with CIA Deputy Director Harlan Whitford (Sam Shepard). Whitford thanks Weston for his report, and follows up on Barlow's promise of a promotion by offering to make him a senior agent. However, he also makes it clear that he will be expunging any mention of Barlow's wrongdoing from the report so that the information doesn't leak out. According to Whitford, "People don't want the truth anymore, man. It's too messy. It keeps them up nights."

But after his ordeal, Weston has come to greatly value the truth. He's been caught in a murky sea of lies throughout the film, often unable to determine which way is up. When Whitford tries to cover up the situation , it's the final moment of clarity. Weston knows now that if he continues to work for the CIA, he will completely forfeit any hope of an honest life. Eventually, he'll begin to believe whatever lies he tells himself and others to keep the charade going, just like Frost warned.

He does tell one more lie, though. When Whitford asks Weston about the microchip, he tells the deputy director that he's unaware of any such thing. But after leaving his meeting, Weston leaks the files to the media. The move puts him in a precarious position, but at least it's one where he has a handle on the truth.

Is Safe House 2 With Denzel Washington Happening Or Has That Door Closed For Good?

In 2012, Ryan Reynolds and Denzel Washington teamed up for a commercially successful action/thriller in the form of "Safe House." While the film was met with mixed reviews from critics in its day, it was a sizable financial hit, taking in $208 million at the global box office, including more than $126 million domestically. The film has also remained a staple on cable TV and streaming in the years since its release. Perhaps not surprisingly, Universal Pictures was, at one point, developing a sequel.

The follow-up was originally announced in late 2012 shortly after the film's successful theatrical run. At the time, it was reported that writer David Guggenheim would return to pen the screenplay. Now, here we are more than a decade later and next to nothing has been said officially regarding "Safe House 2." So, is the movie still happening? Would Washington or Reynolds return? We're here to break down everything we know. Let's get into it.

Why hasn't Safe House 2 happened yet?

For those who may need a refresher, "Safe House" centers on Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington), one of the CIA's most dangerous traitors, who resurfaces in South Africa after eluding capture for almost a decade. During his interrogation, the safe house he's being held in is attacked by mercenaries forcing rookie agent, Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) to take Frost on the run. Spoilers, but Frost doesn't make it and dies toward the end of the film.

That is one of the complicating factors in getting the sequel going, as Washington's character couldn't live on for a proper sequel. So, it would either have to be Reynolds as Weston teaming up with another actor for another adventure, or a prequel of some kind. So, financially speaking, Universal may have had the motivation to make a follow-up but, creatively, crafting a story that made sense may have been challenging.

The other thing to consider is that every key player became very busy. Reynolds quickly ascended Hollywood's A-list and remains one of the most in-demand actors working today. Similarly, Washington has rarely had a long break in his career and the last decade has been no exception. Writer David Guggenheim has also stayed busy. He was, at one point, set to write a version of "Bad Boys 3" in the aftermath of this movie's success. Guggenheim also penned the Netflix hit "The Christmas Chronicles," and he was the creator of the hit series "Designated Survivor." He may not have had a ton of time to focus on "Safe House 2," particularly as everyone else's availability seemed uncertain.

Everything Denzel Washington has said about Safe House 2

Not much has been said by seemingly anyone involved since the sequel was first announced back in 2012. Washington did, however, briefly address the topic a handful of years ago while promoting "The Equalizer 2," which was actually the first sequel in his storied career . "I don't know what happened to that," Washington said when asked about "Safe House 2" by Yahoo! in 2018. At the time though, it was said that the plan was to make a prequel, which seemingly would have been the best way to get Washington on board.

If the plan was to do a prequel, it would have been harder to get Reynolds involved, which again gets back to the idea that cracking this story was probably tricky. It also probably wouldn't have been easy to get Washington to agree to do the film, as he was never big on the idea of making sequels for the sake of it. In that same interview, the Oscar-winning actor discussed, broadly, his feelings about making sequels.

"It's got to lend itself to that to begin with. I haven't taken a job where I went, 'Oh, this could be five movies.' I haven't looked at it that way."

So it seems like selling Washington on a sequel/prequel might be tough anyhow. Aside from that, practically speaking, the actor is now more than a decade older than he was when the first film came out. A prequel gets less likely by the day. Granted, Tobin Bell came back for "Saw X" recently , which was a prequel that took place nearly 20 years back in that franchise's timeline, so it's not impossible. But if this movie ever becomes a franchise, there are more likely paths forward at this point.

Could another Safe House movie still happen?

The more time that passes, the more likely it seems that "Safe House 2," as originally conceived, is not going to happen. That said, the original film still has a sizable audience and it was recently dominating the charts on Netflix . That being the case, Universal may still see value in doing something with the franchise, though more likely something that would be geared toward the direct-to-video or direct-to-streaming market rather than a big theatrical release.

We've seen several franchises return seemingly based largely on streaming demand. "R.I.P.D." was a giant bomb, but it still got a low-budget sequel last year . There's also the upcoming sequel to Taylor Sheridan's thriller "Wind River" as another example. In both cases, the original cast members did not return but the name recognition still carried enough weight to make the movies worth the investment. A smaller-budget version of "Safe House 2," or maybe even a remake, seems like something with a much better shot at happening at this point. 

Whether or not that does happen is another question entirely, but it seems as though the window for a sequel with either Washington or Reynolds returning has firmly closed.

Review: A remade ‘Speak No Evil’ is less evil, swapping out Euro-bleakness for a family’s bonding

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A soul-chilling modern horror classic has been given a giggly date-night polish in the Blumhouse remake of the 2022 Danish film “Speak No Evil.” Beyond the usual Hollywood impulse to try to increase art-house-sized audiences to big box-office levels, there was really no reason to remake Danish filmmaker Christian Tafdrup’s squirmy hell-is-other-people scenario. But in doing so, writer-director James Watkins has swapped out malevolence for a tamer sense of misadventure. The takeaway? Lingering dread isn’t multiplex-friendly.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with remakes, which, when executed wisely, should give leeway for a different chef’s take on an established dish. And at first, the bones of this “Speak No Evil” effectively mirror the unassuming allure and eccentricity of the original’s groundwork in how tourists bond. Under a stock-standard Tuscan sun, married American couple Louise (Mackenzie Scott) and Ben (Scoot McNairy) spark with a British family sharing their fancy villa. They are a rascally charming, forthright doctor named Paddy (James McAvoy), his smiling wife, Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), and their mute, reserved boy, Ant (Dan Hough).

Ant bonds with Louise and Ben’s own kid, the similarly withdrawn 11-year-old Agnes (Alix West Lefler). After the dinner chat among the adults proves lively and inspiring, in no time there’s a plan for them all to reunite back in the U.K. at the rustic, secluded farmhouse property in the north country where Paddy and Ciara live.

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During a long country weekend, however, the hosts’ energetic hospitality betrays an edge, mainly to do with Paddy’s mercurial, insistent personality and flashes of ill temper toward Ant. But also in how gleefully he’ll push Louise and Ben into a frozen discomfort, as if playing a social-norms parlor game: poking at Louise’s vegetarianism, stiffing them with a dinner bill and taking open displays of horniness too far. In these scenes, it’s hard to take your eyes off the glinting McAvoy, who’s like some fiendish juggler of items both benign and dangerous. You know he’ll throw something at you if you’re not prepared.

But while Ben and Louise, already not the most secure of unions, argue where their bailout line is, Ant seems intent on secretly communicating to Agnes something gravely serious about the situation they’re in. And that’s when the unsettling road that the new film, to this point, has mostly shared with the Danish original suddenly forks, sending its characters into a very different endgame, one with a vastly different tone and outlook.

The central deviation is that this “Speak No Evil,” with its more pronounced humor and catharsis, treats the other film’s scenario as a ghastly comedy of manners rather than as a brutalizing, unheroic descent. In other words, it’s no longer true horror. But, hey, it’s hard to sell tickets to the feel-bads, so a trap becomes a maze, the weak become the strong and predators learn a little bit about being the prey. Who wants to leave the theater remembering how unsettling it was initially to watch observant, good people ignore every protective instinct, a merciless commentary on our thirst-to-belong society?

And sure, some of what’s different here is admirably pulse-racing, because Watkins constructs a sturdy ride, including the amusing needle drop of an ’80s song best left unspoiled. He’s also gifted with a great cast, starting with McAvoy and very much extending to the exquisite marital purgatory of McNairy and Scott But when you won’t speak the evil of “Speak No Evil,” then a disservice has been done to the source terror and how expertly it refused to deliver us to a safe place.

'Speak No Evil'

Rating: R, for some strong violence, language, some sexual content and brief drug use Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes Playing: In wide release Friday, Sept. 13

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