Movie Review: Safe

            Answer me honestly: Who doesn’t like a good action-suspense movie fueled with nothing but testosterone? (And well-written testosterone at that!) Jason Statham had barely blipped on my celebrity radar until I saw Safe.

Luke Wright, the bad a**

            Not to give too much of the story away, Luke Wright (Jason Statham) screws up a match he was supposed to lose and his boss ends up losing a looooot of money on that match, as well as the people who hired him to set the match up: the Russian mob. Needless to say, the Russians get mighty mad and go after Wright. Wright ends up homeless.

            Meanwhile, in China, a super-genius eleven-year-old named Mei is kidnapped into doing the Triads’ dirty work in New York City. They have her memorize a sequence of numbers, but in transit to get the second sequence, the Russians spirit her away to try and get the numbers out of her. She escapes them and ends up with Wright. And everything—the story, the action, the corruption, the gun fighting—escalates from there in one whirl of testosterone.

            Now, when I think about “T-Films,” as we’ll call them, I think of the 80s movie Commando with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Explosions, muscles, car chases, helicopters, guys gettin’ their skulls severed in half with saw blades. The works. However, the dialogue, the writing, and the overall plot structure suffers because of all the testosterone infused into the film. Safe does not suffer from this plague.

            Multiple stories intertwine you into the world of underground NYC corruption, and you’re fascinated and outraged at once. You root for Wright, pray that Mei doesn’t fall into the wrongs hands or say something that could get her shot, and wonder what’s gonna happen each time the scenes transition. Things are revealed slowly, making the pacing of the story wonderfully juicy, and the watcher doesn’t feel inundated with useless facts about the characters. Everything is meaningful; everything has substance. It couldn’t have been written any better.

Mei, the Genius

            The characters are real, and the plot could happen right under our noses. And you’re served a butt-load of action and butt-whooping, along with a nice dash of thriller to cleanse the palette. Safe was played anything but, and the results were savory, to say the least. Five kernels out of five.