In China, the girl Mei is a genius that looks like a computer in numbers. She is abducted by the Chinese Triads and the boss Han Jiao ends Mei to Chinatown, in New York, to help him in the control of his activities. Meanwhile, the fighter Luke Wright has his life destroyed when he wins a fight against the will of the Russian Mafia and accidentally kills his opponent. The Russian mobsters kill his wife and the alcoholic Luke wanders on the streets and hostels with no objective in life. One day, Han Jiao asks Mei to memorize a long number and soon the Russian Mafia abducts the girl from the Chinese mobs. She escapes from the mobsters and is chased by the Russians; by the corrupt detectives from the NYPD; and by the Triads. When Luke sees the girl fleeing from the Russian mobs in the subway, he protects the girl and discovers that the number she had memorized is the combination of a safe where the Triads keep 30 million dollars. Luke is an elite agent and uses his skills to protect the girl. Mei, a young girl whose memory holds a priceless numerical code, finds herself pursued by the Triads, the Russian mob, and corrupt NYC cops. Coming to her aid is an ex-cage fighter whose life was destroyed by the gangsters on Mei's trail. Jason Statham is one of my favourite action heroes and my favourite movies featuring him are Crank 1 & 2, which are a couple of very original black humor comedies. I have seen Safe several days ago and I must admit it kind of shocked me!<br/><br/>The first few minutes of the movie seemed like the story would be a cool crime movie about revenge, which I always enjoy seeing. Suma sumarum, Jason Statham was a MMA fighter whose pregnant wife has been killed by the Russian mob, so a year later he is a hobo (because those mobsters also promised to kill anyone he befriends) contemplating suicide in a NYC subway station. Meanwhile, a genius little Chinese girl (Mei) had been brought to the USA by the nefarious triads so she would use her unusual intelligence to work as an accountant for their New York branch. However, the same Russian mob that killed Statham's wife kidnaps that little girl, and by a leap of faith Jason sees them in that subway station and decides to kill them saving the girl along the way. The story then gets more complicated and involves Jason and Mei running away from Russian mafia, Chinese triads and corrupt cops. It also turns out that Jason was a black ops agent who worked with these cops a long time ago, and some time later even the mayor of New York and Jason's ex-partner, who is an unstoppable assassin, get involved in this mess.<br/><br/>The story may be convoluted, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. The most amazing and at the same time shocking thing in the movie is the extreme violence with an insanely high bodycount. Literally even the smallest conflict in this movie turns into a mass murder and every problem is solved with violence. It's not just Statham who does the killing; every minor character kills at least a dozen of human beings throughout the movie.<br/><br/>A good example of what the film is like is the scene in the triad's headquarters. Before this scene, Jason and those dirty cops decide to temporarily join forces in order to steal something from those headquarters (I won't spoil what). However, the HQ is a nightclub that is guarded by an army of criminals, so the cops arm themselves and simply storm the building. During this raid, hell breaks loose as they fight their way through endless hordes of bad guys who all get quickly killed. So bullets are fired, blood is spilled, bones are broken, brains are blown to pieces, villains get killed, some of the cops also get shot, and even innocent civilians die. Worst of all, all these deaths occur so quickly that it's hard to tell what's going on. Although the scene only lasts a few minutes, there are more than 30 kills shown in it. <br/><br/>There are more scenes like this, some of them being even more violent; like the part in the hotel where a special team of triad members ends up slaughtering innocent bystanders and then getting themselves "blown to bits" by the police, but I don't have time to explain every particular scene. When I think about it, this is more of a war epic than a crime movie, since some of the shootouts turn into large-scale battles on the streets of NYC. I actually wonder why did the makers of this movie bother to hire all those extras and spend money on filming their deaths, when the entire movie could have been made with 75% less deaths. Safe somewhat reminds me of the GTA video-games (with all those extreme shootouts in urban environment), but it's even more over-the-top.<br/><br/>In the end, Safe is an OK film, but it could have been better. The directing, plot, cinematography and acting are all nice, but for some reason almost every scene in the movie ends with violence, and watching all those murders eventually gets tiresome. Nothing wrong with some dumb action movies but this was one I just couldn't ever really get into or liked watching.<br/><br/>It's being a very typical genre flick, that perhaps is only good to watch late at night, on a Saturday evening, or something like that. It's not bad and it's indeed still entertaining enough but at the same time, I just can't call it a very good movie.<br/><br/>Perhaps it's true that I have seen too many movies like this one already but it was disappointing for me that this movie didn't ever played out as anything fresh or surprising. Besides, I had a hard time getting into this movie or feel involved with any of its characters and actions. This is probably due to it that the movie is being a very simplistic one with its story. The good news about this is that it's also being a very straightforward genre movie, with plenty of action to enjoy in it.<br/><br/>This isn't really the case for the first half of the movie though, which is needlessly slow and overlong. The movie definitely got better to watch in its second half, when its action kicked in. No doubt that the first half was meant to get us more involved with its characters and get to known them as well but the movie so easily also could had done this as the movie progressed, with plenty of action going on at the same time. There was no need for the movie really to take such a long time to establish and setup things.<br/><br/>Another thing that I didn't really liked about this movie was how absurd its story could get at times. I mean, the thing with the story is that almost literally everybody is a bad guy in it. The Russians, the Chinese, the cops. It's just a bit too much all and doesn't ever really work out as anything convincing or entertaining enough.<br/><br/>It's also true that Jason Statham is simply being Jason Statham again in this movie. He too often plays the same sort of character now days, which is really disappointing, since I actually quite like him as an actor and believe he has plenty of charisma and range in him as well.<br/><br/>The action still saves this movie from being a total disaster. It's being brought very lively to the screen by some great camera-work and nimble editing. It's watchable enough all but definitely nothing I can consider to be recommendable.<br/><br/>5/10 <br/><br/>http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/ A preposterously enjoyable - or enjoyably preposterous - action-thriller.
Debboroz replied
365 weeks ago