On the couch

Safe House
***
Directed by: Daniel Espinosa
Starring: Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson

Martha Marcy May Marlene
****
Directed by: Sean Durkin
Starring: Elizabeth Olsen, John Hawkes, Sarah Paulson, Hugh Dancy

 

When Denzel Washington is bad he’s always really good.

 

Despite playing a number of nice blokes, good guys and heroic sorts to admirable effect in the past, there’s something about Washington that’s just infinitely more entertaining when he’s hanging out in a moral vacuum as he did as crooked LA cop Alonzo Harris or drugs kingpin Frank Lucas.

Safe House might not offer Washington a role with quite so much meat on it as Training Day or American Gangster but there’s still plenty of fun to be had as ex-CIA spook and master manipulator, Tobin Frost.

Lining out against (or is it beside) Frost is ambitious rookie Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds), a junior operative trusted only to act as inn keeper for a seldom-used CIA safe house in Cape Town.

When Frost turns himself into US custody after nine years of selling out Agency secrets to whomever had the most cash, Weston suddenly finds himself in the thick of things as a legend of the spy business is landed in his custody.

Explosions, double crosses and Man on Fire-style gunplay ensues as Weston goes on the run with his house guest as the two try to evade an anonymous kill squad dead set on killing the pair and recovering some valuable information from Frost.

As the Bourne films have taught us, no operative goes to work without some shady Washington types getting up to jinx in the corridors of Capitol Hill and CIA headquarters in Langley and in Safe House the suit duties are filled by Vera Farmiga and Brendan Gleeson, one suspicious of Weston’s involvement in Frost’s escape, the other backing the young fella.
As can be expected from everyone involved, the cast do a fine job with the material they have. Even Reynolds manages to curtail his trademark snark and plays Weston straight as an arrow.

While Safe House doesn’t reinvent the wheel genre-wise, it does a good job of providing a solid thriller with an expert cast who, if not on top of their game, are pretty close to it.

Martha Marcy May Marlene is a troubling, difficult film but worth every perplexing minute.
Elizabeth Olsen, younger sister of talent black holes Ashley and Mary Kate, stars as Martha, a troubled young woman who, at the film’s opening, runs away from the oppressive cult/commune she’s been a part of.

Her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) picks her up and takes her to the holiday home she shares with her husband and from there Martha’s breakdown begins as she flashes back to her two years under the influence of cult leader Patrick (John Hawkes) and struggles to bond with her sister or reintegrate with the real world.

A film of awkward moments, painful silences and harrowing revelations M’s life in the commune begins benignly enough with life mostly consisting of bad folk guitar and some light farming.

Things soon take a turn for the creepy and as the bad memories begin to flood back, her behaviour with her sister and brother-in-law start to transmute from quirky – she responds to an offer to go swimming by just whipping off her clothes and jumping in the water as though skinny dipping is a normal course of action – to antisocial and weird – she curls up to sleep at the end of the bed her sister is having sex in.

The shifts between memory and reality is accomplished with great elegance. Sounds and sensations overlap and the one flows into the other without ever feeling clunky or awkward.
While the worlds of MMMM are small – the holiday home and the farm – they are both illustrated with intricate detail, and this attention is further enhanced by powerful performances from Olsen and Hawkes and strong showings from Paulson, Dancy and Brady Corbett, another of the creepy cultists.

Tough and bleak but fascinating all the same, Martha Marcy May Marlene may not suit everyone’s taste and the abrupt ending may prove a sticking point for some. It is worth watching, nonetheless, as you can be guaranteed you haven’t seen anything remotely like it this year.