Not so Safe House

In Safe House Ryan Reynolds reprises his role as Green Lantern to battle the nefarious Mr. Frost, played by Denzel Washington, whose superpowers include the ability to beat people up really badly and inject data capsules into his body where nobody will find them. Unfortunately, Hal Jordan has somehow managed to lose his ring and gets beat up a lot and stabbed with broken glass. And his driver's license has probably been revoked because he wrecks a lot of cars.

Okay, so Reynolds actually takes on the role of Matt Weston, a CIA "housekeeper," someone whose job is to watch over a safe house for field operatives and to maintain the safety of any "house guests" who arrive for a little enhanced interrogation. It seems like a pretty nice gig, really. You just sit around in a highly secure place with all kinds of doors with security keypads and a nice fridge stocked with fruits, soft drinks, plasma and medicines. Yeah, you know, just like the stuff you have in your fridge right now. I guess the whole idea of showing that scene of the refrigerator contents was to let you know what kind of apartment this is, but it was kind of a moot point, given that, you know, the title of the movie sort of gives it away.

The only problem with landing a nice job like this where you get paid lots of money to sit around bouncing a tennis ball off the wall and lying to your girlfriend about working at a clinic is that inevitably Hollywood will come along and want to shoot the place up.

So when Tobin Frost arrives, poor Hal, I mean Matt, is forced to do some real tough-guy stuff like hijack a car, drive it really, really fast, get shot at and beat up and actually shoot people himself.

Reynolds is actually pretty good as the in-over-his-head Weston. He is convincing as the idealistic agent whose worldview is flipped on its side by the jaded traitor Frost. We learn early in the film that Frost is a bad dude--in multiple senses of the term. But you can't help feeling he's not all rotten to the core, and the idea that he and Weston will become allies at some point is inescapable. Because the focus of the film is on Frost and Weston, the other characters are more placeholders than anything else, with Brendan Gleeson playing Weston's boss, Vera Farmiga as the agent in charge of the operation to secure and interrogate Frost, and Sam Shephard as CIA Director Harlan Whitford. Their jobs are just to act as Hollywood expects us to believe CIA personnel behave, which is both bad and good.

The movie opens with a glimpse of Weston's life as a housekeeper. He has a girlfriend, played by Nora Arnezeder, to whom he must lie about what he's really doing. The film makes Weston's job seem insufferably boring. He's alone in a place that looks like a well-stocked bomb shelter. He seems to spend most of his time listening to music and bouncing that ball off the wall.

And then the phone rings and his life takes a drastic turn. Frost, fleeing a group of armed men hellbent on recovering the data he's just received from a contact, has walked into an embassy and got himself nabbed by the CIA to be dragged to Weston's safe house. It seems that Frost is a bad guy who sells classified information to anybody with a suitable amount of cash. What's on the data capsule he carries that warrants constant pursuit from armed men who manage to find him wherever he goes? Well, that's the big mystery in the film.

In spite of the presence of well-armed and well-trained military men, the safe house is invaded, turned upside down and all of the military personnel killed. Weston is forced to flee with Frost in tow because it's his duty to take care of his guests. "In brightest day, in blackest night ..."

We saw this coming, of course. So, too, could we predict Frost's escape and Weston's determination to get him back. The first idea we get that maybe Frost isn't all bad comes when he has the opportunity to kill Weston but does not, telling him, "I only kill professionals." At first this appears to be a taunt, an insult to the bungling, amateurish Weston, who seems in over his head and out of his element. Jason Bourne he is not. He's the guy that sits in a safe house bouncing a tennis ball off the wall. And wondering where he lost that ring. It is revealed later, however, that the taunt is more a kind of code Frost follows and instructs Weston to also follow.

Everything sorts itself out rather predictably, but the action is fast paced and the tension is thick. You'd have to be pretty dense not to know who the real bad guy is. Weston emerges as a sympathetic character, but you can't help admiring Frost's confidence and presence. That may be Washington's strength as an actor: He has a real screen presence and does the cocky, badass role very well. He nonchalantly shoots bad guys like tossing a wad of paper into a waste basket.

Many will harp on the movie's predictability, but it's not really not the point to deliver up surprising plot twists. The focus is on the characters of Weston and Frost and how their relationship evolves throughout the film. It also challenges our perceptions of what it means to be a "bad" person in the world of lies and subterfuge. The characters and situations here are light years from the old westerns in which the bad guys wore the black hats. Even then things were never so clear cut, but the waters are even muddier now.

The film ends in different kinds of triumph for both Weston and Frost. Weston learns that his idealism has been built on a sham, that his purpose served a cause that didn't really exist. His path in life has been forever altered by his experience. Frost manages to regain his humanity and in the process finds redemption. Thought it would be easy to think that Weston will follow Frost's path, the evidence suggests otherwise. It is clear that Weston is not frost and that he will in fact do as Frost instructed and be a better person than he.

As a thriller Safe House comes up a bit short for its predictability, but as a story examining the inevitable collision of two men seemingly on different sides of the spy game, it delivers an engaging character study that's worth watching.

Good news: Sherlock to return for a third series!

Okay, so it's not really news. The announcement was made back in January that Holmes and Watson would be  teaming up again for another run, but it gives me a good excuse to offer up some praise for series creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss (who also plays Sherlock's brother Mycroft), as well as for actors Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) and Martin Freeman (Watson).

What's so great about Sherlock? I'm sure many will wonder. We've seen dozens of retellings of the adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle's character, the most famous detective in history. What's so special about this one?

Let's start with the setting. It's not so much the where, but the when. No, this is not your traditional Sherlock Holmes, scouring for clues in signature deerstalker cap. This is a modern reimagining of the character and the original stories. Modern technology figures prominently in the stories. Watson, for example, writes a blog about the cases he and Holmes are investigating, and the blog itself figures in some plot elements. In one episode, a cell phone and the data it holds is the key to a case. It's obvious to see that an important premise of the series deals with how the world's greatest detective would utilize modern technology. What if Sherlock Holmes had access to forensic evidence and computer technology? You can see the many answers in every episode. Technology is often used to put a new twist on Conan Doyle's stories, for example in the episode "The Hounds of Baskerville." But it's nice to know that the technology can't provide all the answers; it's more about the logic and the cunning Sherlock employs in utilizing the technology and, at times, even outsmarting it.

It's not just the idea of dusting off some old books and throwing them into a modern setting. Posing the serious question of what if Holmes and Watson were alive today is central to the series. Instead of using some contrivance such as time travel or doing down the path of making this Holmes the great-great-great grandson of the original, Moffat and Gatiss have opted for a kind of modern reboot. Because of that, it works very well in context. And the show has a lot of fun playing with the traditional images of the character. Cumberbatch's Holmes never wears a hat, but he is given a deerstalker in one episode as a gift from an adoring fan. He finds himself reluctantly obligated to wear it a couple of times.

Another appeal of the series is the strong characters. Moffat's Holmes is arrogant and patronizing, sometimes callous and borderline amoral. As he remarked in one episode, "I'm not a psychopath; I'm a highly functioning sociopath." He delivers analyses and punchlines with machine-gun rapidity and impact. Holmes is at his worst in  his uncaring treatment of Molly. His treatment of her is often excruciating, though he does finally tell her in one episode that he needs her.

While he is often insensitive to the feelings of others and even uses them to suit his needs, Sherlock nevertheless acts on their behalf to protect them and genuinely seems to care. And there are times, especially when Holmes matches wits with arch-nemesis Moriarty, that he seems vulnerable and appears to doubt his intellectual prowess. The balance between these extremes ultimately makes his callousness endearing and even provides much humor.

Juxtaposed against the cold, analytical Holmes is the sensitive, insecure Watson. John Watson is a war veteran, a former army medic and is, psychologically and physically, damaged. When he first meets Holmes, John walks with a limp and uses a cane to get around. Sherlock declares the problem to be psychosomatic and then tricks Watson into not only walking without the cane, but running. In many respects, John is the straight man to Holmes' often comically manic and obsessive actions. But Watson's good intentions often result in some of the most amusing moments in the series. At one point while investigating at night John sees a flashing light in the distance. He determines that it must be someone sending a message in Morse code and so attempts to decipher it. The results aren't exactly what anyone expected, especially when he investigates the source of the mysterious blinking. At moments like this, you want to cheer Watson for being clever, but it's another example of his failing to match the brilliance of his partner. John is often on hand to help bring some sanity to Holmes' methods and to smooth things over when Sherlock insults others, as he tends to do.

Cumberbatch makes a fine Sherlock and Freeman seems the perfect Watson. Gatiss is appropriately royal as Sherlock's government official brother, and Andrew Scott is fairly detestable as the nefarious Moriarty. It's a fine cast that meshes well. All in all, the characters are very likable—or appropriately despicable. Even the despicable ones are likably so.

In Sherlockian tradition, each episode features its share of puzzles that leave the audience guessing. Most of the time the guessing comes in the form of trying to predict how exactly Holmes will solve the mystery or figure his way out of a predicament. The series offers up a fine share of twists and surprises to keep viewers on their toes. The action is often so chaotic you don't quite have enough time to figure it all out. It's hard enough just to keep up with the collective train of thought of the series.

What may be the most enjoyable part of the show, however, is the humor. Between Holmes' antics, Watson's apologies and the unpredictable actions of many characters, the show is one of the most knee-slappingly funny I've ever watched. You can never quite predict just how Holmes will respond to another character, but you know it's going to be irreverent, inappropriate or, to some varying degree, in bad taste. And you can't help but feel a bit sorry for Watson to have put up with it all. There's plenty of sympathy for Mrs. Hudson as well, as she never knows quite what she's going to find when she opens the fridge. Why she even does it any more is beyond me, but she seems to have this compulsion to be offended by its contents.

The worst part about the show is that each "series" spans but three episodes. Each episode is an hour and half in length, but the end of each series comes all too quickly. The wait between Series 1 and Series 2 seemed interminable. And now I'm left wondering when those of us in the States will finally get to see Series 3. I can't help wondering what it would be like to see these characters on the big screen. The problem is, any movie shorter than three hours just wouldn't be enough, I'm afraid.

I cannot recommend Sherlock highly enough. In the sea of everything else you can watch on TV, this one is a sheer delight.

John Carter: Don't buy the anti-hype

A cliche that has floated around for decades states, "Don't believe the hype." It's a simple idea that hyperbolic claims about something tend to lead to disappointment, that the underlying substance usually fails to live up to the assertions. Hype is much like fiction in that the tale, to paraphrase a well-known writer, tends to grow in the telling. The bigger the hype, the bigger the disappointment in the final product.

The same can be said of negative hype, or "anti-hype," if you will. The more vitriol you hear about something, the less terrible you realize it must actually be.

While I concede that some movies deserve much of the criticism they receive, it often seems that deliberate forces are at work to undermine others, in much the same way that politicians employ attack ads against their opponents.

And that brings me to the recent rental release John Carter, aka John Carter of Mars, aka A Princess of Mars (if we want to link it to its Edgar Rice Burroughs source material), directed by Andrew Stanton and starring Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins. This film suffered greatly from negative hype. Rumors about various problems swirled about as its box office release date approached. The title of the film was even changed before its debut, with various excuses provided. The budget was huge, there were production problems, and there was just no way Disney was going to recoup all of its investment. In short, John Carter was a dismal failure.

The truth is, John Carter is not such a bad movie after all. The saddest part is that it was indeed a failure at the box office and may be declared one of the biggest bombs of all time. Frankly, I have seen far worse films that performed far better at the box office.

That is not to say that John Carter is a great movie, but it does have enough in the way of story, special effects and action to make it pretty darned good. And at its core it does offer a fine look at the development of the titular character.

One reason stated for the title change from John Carter of Mars to simply John Carter was to show the progression of the character from a Virginia Civil War veteran who'd lost hope to a man of Mars who'd found a reason to live. In keeping with this idea, the final title screen displays the title as John Carter of Mars. I found this to be a fitting touch, and it truly felt like a triumphant moment.

Unlike many movies that hit the big screen—especially those in the SF and fantasy genre—John Carter is a patient film that is happy to let the character and story develop over time. Beyond the special effects, the action, the romance and even the humor, this above all else makes it worth watching. Most films seem to want to rush headlong from start to finish, story be damned. The more explosions, fights and gunshots, the better. Most people will say John Carter dragged at times. I say it's at those moments that the most critical character development occurs.

And it's the character of John Carter that makes the film. You find yourself liking him from the start. He's willful, cantankerous, resourceful, and he's apathetic, a man who has lost hope. The reason for his despair unfolds over time throughout the film, revealed to us as fragmentary flashbacks until a final, drawn-out scene during an epic battle reveals his pain and loss in bitter full. It is a powerful and moving image, one of the best I've seen in any film of this genre.

You cannot help wanting John Carter to find himself, to regain some measure of purpose and happiness in his life. When it finally happens, it is a satisfying moment. And that is the best way to describe how I felt at the end of this film. It was fulfilling and satisfying.

It's not a perfect movie. There are certainly plenty of awkward moments of unintentional humor. The scene in which Carter is trying to learn how to walk on a planet of lesser gravity than he's accustomed to frankly went on a bit too long. The low-gravity schtick was overdone in many parts of the film and grew tiresome. We did not need to be reminded of it time and time again.

The romance between Carter and Deja was, naturally, predictable and all-too obvious from the start, even when it was apparent that Deja was determined to exploit Carter's strength and abilities to save her planet. But that doesn't mean it still wasn't engaging or that the viewer didn't want it to happen. I contrast this strongly with the romance of Anakin and Padme in the Star Wars films. I was entirely indifferent to that romance, didn't want it to happen and really hoped it would just go away. Here, at least, there are moments you find yourself mentally telling Carter, "Just kiss her, dammit!"

The awkward, predictable or even slow moments are mere blips on the map in an adventure brimming with all of the classic formula elements of action, romance, danger, heroism and humor. It is, simply, an enjoyable, if not terribly remarkable, movie.

In addition to a fine story and some good special effects, John Carter also boasts a great cast, many of whom lend their voices to CGI figures, including Willem Dafoe as Tar Tharkis, Thomas Haden Church as Tal Hajus, Dominic West (McNulty!) as Sab Than and Mark Strong as Matai Shang, and, oh, yes, Bryan Cranston as the Civil War officer, Col. Powell.

No, I will not say John Carter is the best SF/fantasy film I've seen, but it stands up to many of the best and most of the recent releases in the genre. It's more than worth the rental or purchase price, and I may very well grab the Blu-ray myself. This is a clear-cut case of a movie most undeserving of the negative hype.