SAFE HOUSE

Came in late and ended up staying up to watch a Denzel Washington/Ryan Reynolds action-espionage-mystery-thriller that ultimately wasn't worth it, but was paced and plotted well enough to keep me watching. It said it was released last year, so I guess it was Denzel's non-Oscar movie for 2012, and Reynolds' attempt to be the new Matt Damon of these kinds of flicks. But nobody has been able to top Damon in the Bourne trilogy, nobody.

But Reynolds does a great job with what he's given, as does Denzel, as usual. But can anyone explain to me why it seems almost every movie that has a lot of action and/or violence, especially the latter, these days has to be shot through filters that make everything look like someone tinted the film (I know it's probably digital, so no film) green or hello or green and yellow? [wow, that was one of those great brain mishaps typing hello for yellow]

In the book and magazine business in the old days, only using two colors meant you didn't have the money or were too cheap to spring for full color and the books looked cheap. As these kinds of flicks to do my eye. The actors, at least some of them, were doing some nice work here and there but all the subtlety was drained from their faces and expressions because of these filters making everything look like someone had slimed the lights illuminating the scene or decided to just keep it dark and murky.

Maybe it's meant to cover up bad stunt work or some other aspect of filming, but my guess is some directors actually find it interesting, like those arty student movies in the old days that spent what seemed like hours on close ups of women brushing their hair. And I'm sorry but I still don't like Vera Farmiga who had one of the co-starring roles, although her character was meant to be disliked. Another co star who I always like but was mostly wasted in this was Brendan Gleeson.

Sam Sheperd had a small role as well and did it well. But one of the smallest roles almost stole the film from Denzel and Reynolds and that was played by Ruben Blades who I could have watched much more of. In the end I'd rather have been watching one of the Oscar nominated films I haven't seen yet, but for a couple of hours of escape, it wasn't terrible.

[Whoever made the movie obviously sent it to cable pretty quickly, and I couldn't even find a proper film poster on the web so my guess is it was seen as a loser from the gitgo, and I would second guess that the blame can be mostly put on the effin' filters the director, Daniel Espinosa, was so enamored of.