To say that Safe, the new action movie starring Jason Statham, is a riveting, emotional film with deep philosophical implications would be a lie. This movie has more than its fair share of car chases, gun fights, and physical encounters where the objective seems to be to turn the enemy into a bloody pulp. But Safe is a cut above the usual “shoot ‘em up” action film, for it features a decent if cliched plot and has a little more focus on emotion than one would guess. Set in New York City, the film centers around Luke Wright, played by Statham, and a young girl, Mei, played by the promising Catherine Chan.
The film starts with Luke, a cage fighter with a slightly suspect past, accidentally winning a fight he’s supposed to throw. As payback, the Russian mob murders his family and leaves Luke alive under one condition; they will kill anyone Luke gets close to, leaving him a solitary vagrant living in self-imposed, antisocial hell. Meanwhile, Mei, a math prodigy with photographic memory, is kidnapped and taken from her home in China and forced to work for the Chinese triads back in the severely corrupted New York.
The rest of the movie follows Wright and Mei teaming up, and fighting for some sort of safety from Russian mafia, Chinese gangsters and greedy police more concerned with lining their pockets than keeping the streets of New York City safe. All three groups want Mei, and all three groups are willing to stab each other in the back to get their hands on her and the number she has memorized.
The plot isn’t particularly original, but it was enjoyable in its own way, and the addition of Mei leads to charming character interactions between Chan and Statham, who have plenty of sassy one-liners. She also keeps the film grounded in the plot, keeping Luke from getting too lost in his world of angst and personal revenge. Another character who kept the movie emotional without making it sappy is Quan Chang, Mei’s “adoptive” mob father. The film spends some time on his characterization, and the audience was left wondering if he did genuinely care for Mei, or if he feigned interest as part of his mob job.
For a movie genre where side characters are usually treated as nothing more than plot devices, Safe had plenty of interesting ones, and they were one of the highlights of Safe. Chris Sarandon played the wonderfully crass, snarky Mayor Tremello who had insightful conversations that never got too sappy; Captain Wolf, the police chief played by Robert John Burke, was interesting to watch as a begrudging, untrusting ally to Statham; and Joseph Sikora played the Russian mob boss’s son well, evoking appropriate cruelty and smarminess for the character.
Safe starts out strong, and features very interesting cinematography and clever takes on action scenes in the beginning that shows a lot of craftsmanship. For example, director Boaz Yakin shows fights through car mirrors or shadows on the wall. In one shootout, the scene is fixed on the inside of the car, the cramped setting of which adds to tension and lets us see the characters’ expressions. As the film progresses, however, it devolves into one long gunfight, with little of the attention to detail shown before. While all of the action scenes are fun, and sometimes creative — Statham kills one man with a fork — the fights quickly blur together, leaving the audience missing the storytelling and subtlety of before.
With dead girlfriends, a quest for revenge, and the battle for justice against evil, Safe has all the elements of a typical “Macho Man Against The Corrupted World” movie. So it would be easy to go into the theater and expect Safe to be nothing more than a wannabe James Bond, or a rip-off of the Borne Legacy. However, Safe is neither of those things, for several reasons. Chan’s role as Mei, insignificant as it may seem, adds a lot to the movie. Luke Wright isn’t just some lawless renegade, and he isn’t just striking back at the world over the death of a lover. Revenge may not even be on the list of things Luke Wright is trying to achieve. And unlike agent 007, Statham’s character also isn’t trying to save the world. He’s just trying to keep this little girl safe, and there is a certain amount of refreshing relief to that. For better or for worse, depending on what you want to get out of this movie, Chan’s character Mei drastically changes Safe by creating an emotional bond rarely seen in movies like this; a parental one.
James Bond can go off to avenge Vesper and Jason Bourne can fight for his identity and memories, but Luke Wright is stabbing men with forks, double-crossing double-crosses and fighting corruption, all in an attempt to protect an innocent little child. That’s not only impressive, but also what makes Safe stand out, even if it’s only by a little bit.
