"He's sooo hot," the woman sitting next to me at the screening of Safe House sighed to her friend as the film's opening images of Ryan Reynolds working out flashed on the screen. She then went on to fiddle with her BlackBerry for half the movie. Based on those two actions, she is, I think, this scattered but not totally disagreeable CIA conspiracy thriller's ideal audience: appreciative enough of Ryan Reynolds's body to accept a world-spanning espionage drama staked on his value as a boyfriend-and beyond that, not paying too much attention.
Reynolds plays Matt Weston, a junior CIA agent assigned to babysit a safe house in Cape Town, South Africa. The house has gone unused for Matt's entire 12-month stay there, and he's dying to be transferred to Paris, where his adorable girlfriend Ana (French actress Nora Arnezeder) is scheduled to take a job in two weeks. But his boss (Brendan Gleeson) tells Matt he needs to prove himself. Then an extremely high-value “guest” checks into the house: rogue agent Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington).
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