Some actors simply aren't versatile and spend their entire careers sticking to what they do best. Can you imagine, for example, Steven Seagal in a stage farce or Hugh Grant in a martial arts flick? They do what they're good at, keeping fans around the world happy
but neither of them display that chameleon-like ability to slip from one challenging role to another in the way the likes of Daniel Day-Lewis or Robert De Niro seem so adept. So it is when you walk into a Jason Statham movie. Before the film even begins you know there's going to be fighting and shooting, car chases and slow motion action, baddies being dispatched with cool one-liners, and so on and so forth. It's pointless going in expecting anything else, and just as pointless grumbling as you head for the exit about the plot being too derivative, or the dialogue too cheesy, or that it was all action and nothing else. Safe is a film which is pretty much described by its own title - it is indeed a totally safe action flick, with every character, situation and plot development as familiar as the back of your hand. Director Boaz Yakin makes no effort to disguise the clichés, opting instead to concentrate on noisy spectacle in the Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer tradition. All good and well, if that's the kind of thing that floats your boat.
The story rather resembles movies like Man On Fire and Mercury Rising in the sense that it features a gifted child being hunted by villains, with help coming from a lone protector who happens to be pretty impossible to kill. This time it's a young Chinese girl named Mei (Catherine Chan), a mathematical genius taken from her ill mother and sent to America to work as a "counter" for the Triads in New York. Mei is given a seemingly random list of numbers to memorise, but suddenly becomes the target of the Russian Mafia and a team of corrupt cops. It transpires that the numbers contain a code which will unlock a safe containing $30 million and there are plenty willing to kill to get to the fortune. Mei goes on the run, pursued by enemies from all sides who want the information she alone carries. Enter down-and-out bum Luke Wright (Jason Staham), formerly a cop, more recently a cage fighter, whose life has descended into suicidal depths of depression after the murder of his wife. On the verge of putting an end to his misery once and for all, Luke is offered a chance of redemption when he saves Mei from her pursuers. Suddenly he's back in the game he knows best, rampaging through the city with cops, Russian mobsters and Chinese hit men hot on his trail.
The opening twenty minutes or so are a real mess, with some rushed non-chronological plot exposition and the briefest sketching-in of character. Things pick up once Mei and Luke team up to outwit the bad guys, for it is here when Yakin gets to unleash his thunderous action. No-one will come away from the film thinking they've just witnessed something innovative and ground-breaking. Nor will anyone be writing letters of complaint to the Academy when they overlook these performances at the announcement of next year's Oscar nominations. Safe is what it is . a big, dumb action movie for the boys, with a kill-count that Mei herself might have trouble keeping track of, and sufficient mayhem to keep genre addicts happy. Efficient entertainment while it lasts, but you'll have forgotten it by the next day.
The story rather resembles movies like Man On Fire and Mercury Rising in the sense that it features a gifted child being hunted by villains, with help coming from a lone protector who happens to be pretty impossible to kill. This time it's a young Chinese girl named Mei (Catherine Chan), a mathematical genius taken from her ill mother and sent to America to work as a "counter" for the Triads in New York. Mei is given a seemingly random list of numbers to memorise, but suddenly becomes the target of the Russian Mafia and a team of corrupt cops. It transpires that the numbers contain a code which will unlock a safe containing $30 million and there are plenty willing to kill to get to the fortune. Mei goes on the run, pursued by enemies from all sides who want the information she alone carries. Enter down-and-out bum Luke Wright (Jason Staham), formerly a cop, more recently a cage fighter, whose life has descended into suicidal depths of depression after the murder of his wife. On the verge of putting an end to his misery once and for all, Luke is offered a chance of redemption when he saves Mei from her pursuers. Suddenly he's back in the game he knows best, rampaging through the city with cops, Russian mobsters and Chinese hit men hot on his trail.
The opening twenty minutes or so are a real mess, with some rushed non-chronological plot exposition and the briefest sketching-in of character. Things pick up once Mei and Luke team up to outwit the bad guys, for it is here when Yakin gets to unleash his thunderous action. No-one will come away from the film thinking they've just witnessed something innovative and ground-breaking. Nor will anyone be writing letters of complaint to the Academy when they overlook these performances at the announcement of next year's Oscar nominations. Safe is what it is . a big, dumb action movie for the boys, with a kill-count that Mei herself might have trouble keeping track of, and sufficient mayhem to keep genre addicts happy. Efficient entertainment while it lasts, but you'll have forgotten it by the next day.