Sécurité rapprochée

« Everybody betrays everybody. » Je pense que vous aimeriez autant ne pas avoir de tueurs sud-africains à vos talons. Se déroulant dans le décor peu familier des rues de Cape Town, Sécurité rapprochée est un thriller décent avec des visuels à la Ridley Scott et un montage dans le style de la série de films avec Jason Bourne. Pour un réalisateur débutant à Hollywood, l’action est pas mal, mais à part ça, le scénario n’est qu’une bête variante sur le thème du jeune agent qui se bat physiquement et mentalement contre le système corrompu de la CIA (dans lequel il croyait auparavant avec conviction). Je n’ai ressenti aucune chimie entre le mentor et le novice, alors que ça aurait dû être le moteur du film. En comparaison, le duo Washington/Hawke était nettement plus convaincant. (09/02/2012)

I found it hard to feel anything towards the characters, I don’t know why Tobin Frost was so tight and why Ryan Reynolds was so unimpressive. Action fine overall, and no shortage of swines in charge. The story is more or less a classic. A little livelier story would have helped. The ending is very pleasing with a nice whistle-blower’s epilog. (25/05/2012)

It's good to see it as basically the debut of Daniel Espinosa's, an almost unknown director, at least for now. At the same time, Safe House is a film with a script that doesn’t have any higher ambitions, but within the mainstream, it’s more than solid. Fortunately, it's not just a dumb action movie, although it slightly leans towards that thematically. It's saved by the excellent cast (Reynolds, Washington) and intense, kinetic action like Jason Bourne. Espinosa certainly didn't disgrace the genre, and I wouldn't be afraid to entrust him with a bigger budget, a more interesting theme, to raise the bar a bit and let him work his magic. He knows how action and fast pace should look like. (07/07/2012)

The film was probably supposed to give the impression that an agent/prison warden is capable of self-reflection, but I lost my naivety many years ago, so my opinion hasn’t changed. Action-wise, I have no major complaints, the creators obviously made an effort to do a good job in that regard, so action scenes were handled very well (too bad the cameraman didn't let me see more of it, the saboteur). What was worse was the suspense, which was noticeably lacking given that it was clear who was going to make it through the crossfire to the finale, and also because it was extremely predictable who the main villain was. No, let me rephrase that. The sentence should have read: who was behind the main character's problems. There were so many villains that I really wouldn't have dared to guess which one was the worst. Aside from the already mentioned flaws, there were logic holes here and there, and the main message was the cliché about the Secret Service being a necessary evil. That’s all I took away from the film. / Lesson learned: You’d better not go running on South African rooftops. (08/08/2022)