Safe House

So far, after only one week in theaters, "Safe House" has made over $49,201,240 in domestic ticket sales and another estimated  $10,200,000 in foreign sales. With an estimated $85 million production budget, Universal Studios is just over the half way point of breaking even with this film.  However this is a long way from other films of this type, which include films like any of the Jason Bourne films which holds three positions in the top five of the "thriller-on the run" sub genre of films.  The other two, ranking at number two and four respectively are "The Fugitive" with Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones from 1993 and "Minority Report" with Tom Cruise from 2002.  Right now "Safe House" hangs at number 13 right behind the 1998 release of "US Marshals" and just ahead of Sondra Bullock in "The Net."

Some movies within a certain genre are better than others are. "Safe House" is somewhere in the middle. Denzel Washington ("Man on Fire," "Déjà vu," "Training Day") is rouge CIA agent Tobin Frost who is now in the business of selling nations secrets. Tobin doesn't care which nation's secrets he sells. It could be the United States', it could be the UK's, or it could be all of them. Well, things go wrong for him while purchasing the "intel" and after some initial fight and flight scenes Tobin ends up at the US Consulate in Cape Town South Africa. Matt Westin is the keeper of the US's safe house, where Tobin will transfer to a few scenes later. Ryan Reynolds ("Van Wilder," "Blade: Trinity") plays the poor sap who for the last year has pretended to go to work at a clinic for the poor but is really been staring at four walls waiting for a house guest to arrive at the safe house. "Safe House" is rated R for extreme violence and language. Don't take the kids.  Read more of this review