Simply Perfect

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Good movie but grossly overrated

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

If you are watching a Jason Statham film, you are probably expecting action. "Safe" gives you action in spades--once it gets started. In the opening scenes, there are two consecutive flashbacks that serve no purpose but slow the development of the film. But once the narrative gets going, the action is superior.First of all, there is so much of it. Secondly, the hand-to-hand combat is very convincing--a requirement for any good action film. Lastly, the chase scenes are exciting and well designed.The story involves a battle between three entities--the Russian mob, the Chinese mob, and New York City police. All three are corrupt organizations, and all three want the same thing--to capture a Chinese girl with important information. Statham's character (a former undercover cop) determines to protect the child despite overwhelming odds. The relationship between the two fugitives is critical to the film's story. Statham is up to the challenge, despite his rough, unemotional façade. One is reminded of Schwarzenegger in "Commando" or Statham himself in "Safe". The added emotional content elevates this film above many others of the genre.

If you're a fan of action thrillers, the name Jason Statham on a movie tells you pretty much all you need to know: there will be a loner good-bad guy hero who gets involved in a complex criminal or espionage scheme, during the course of which trying to rescue someone or doing a necessary job he fights his way through various locations, dispatching an endless series of villains with his bare hands (and sometimes feet and head too) and various weapons, usually ending up doing the action hero equivalent of riding off into the sunset.Safe follows the formula. The plot here concerns an 11 year old Chinese girl math prodigy who is kidnapped in China by a Triad who want to exploit her amazing ability to remember numbers for their own evil ends; they send her to New York where she draws the additional nefarious attentions of the Russian Mafia and a cabal of corrupt cops, from all of whom she is rescued by guess who.I thought this was a better than average example of the genre. Catherine Chan does a good job as the child math prodigy, wisely underplaying her role, and the contrasting locales in China and various NYC environments add visual interest. If you're a fan of the genre, I think you'll like this one. If you haven't seen any action thrillers and want to try one out, this one might be a good choice. If you don't care for the genre, you'll probably want to skip it. My three star rating is based on how attractive I think the film would be to a general audience; if you're a fan of the genre, give it four stars.Advisory: rated R, which I thought was rather surprising, since there's not much sex, language is fairly mild by current standards, and the violence, though pervasive, is not especially gory: as often, there is a certain video game quality to the series of bad guys getting blasted bam-bam-bam. I saw this on the Lion's Gate Region 1 Blu-Ray, which was of very good quality.

Sadly a victim of poor-to-no marketing pre-release, this fantastic action thriller did not find an audience theatrically, though the word-of-mouth was uniformly damning with high praise (not faint). Everyone wanted a PG-13 actioner at the time, and got confused at Yakin (Remember the Titans) being behind-the-scenes, and did not know what to expect. It was something which could've been fixed by smart marketing, esp. in a world stuck to the internet but no, they almost released this direct to video, and both fans of the genre, fans of the star possibly missed out on a very engaging, balls-to-the-wall (soft) R-rated actioner, that's one of the better genre things that Statham has done, and is yet to better.A kinda throwback to the 80s and 90s thrillers, it almost feels like something Shane Black would've written. The flashbacks, and flashback-within-flashbacks structure, for a change, works very well, and this flick possibly has one of the longest setups ever in this kind of a movie, running close to the 1st 30 minutes. Miss even 5 of those, and you'll think you have it figured later, but would do better to revisit the minutes you missed initially.The casting is pitch-perfect, with Statham and everyone else (esp. the heavies) playing to their strengths. The biggest strength this movie has going for it, aside from the fact that there's a genuine sense of urgency and dread in each and every sequence, aside from the fact that everyone's playing it seriously and nothing's for a laugh, is the fantastic action choreography, perhaps the best yet this side of a Bourne movie. You could have had Daniel Craig or Liam Neeson playing the lead, and neither star wouldn't be outa place in this action thriller.Lean and mean, and packed with moments that have unexpected payoffs, this is one for repeated viewings. In fact, I'm writing this after having watched this for the 4th time, with my first 2 viewings being at the cinema, thankfully with a like-minded audience. Perfect, and I do hope it has a decent life at least on video. I, for one, got optimistic after viewing this, but was let down by most of Statham's choices after.

Awful bullshit. M a yLinda Indal is a Norwegian Nazi who has been chosen by slave owners, feudalists, capitalists and the catholic church to play the part "mother of God" in this world. While the world isn't yet ready for such a stupid understanding of the world, though, in the meantime she's often playing the part of the poor girl being bullied by others. This movie is just one in a long row of movies building that image. They're in league with the implant guys, wheather they're aware of it or not. Ideological warfare is the ultimate reason Hollywood exists in the first place (remember David W. Griffith's 'The birth of a nation' and 'Intolerance').F a s c i s tc r a p