“Safe House” Theatrical Poster
Director: Jamie Marshall
Cast: Lucien Laviscount, Hannah John-Kamen, Ethan Embry, Lewis Tan, Holt McCallany, Adam Levy, Brett Cullen, Brian Van Holt, Brian Borello, Markina Brown
Running Time: 90 min.
By Z Ravas
On some level, you gotta feel for Lewis Tan. After years of putting in the work via supporting roles in movies like Olympus Has Fallen and Deadpool 2, the UK-born martial artist and model landed the lead part in the recent Mortal Kombat reboot. No doubt the actor (and the actor’s agent) imagined this could be Tan’s big break. But two things happened: 1.) the film was caught up in Warner Brother’s less than desirable COVID release strategy, meaning it was dumped on HBOMax the same day it arrived in theaters, which most likely cut into its box office sales; and 2.) Tan wasn’t actually cast as one of the game’s many popular and fan beloved characters, but rather an original protagonist created for the film.
It’s really this second point that I think did a disservice to Tan: when audiences buy a ticket to Mortal Kombat, they want to see Scorpion throw his flaming spear or Sub-Zero project bolts of ice from his hand, not the less-than-exciting exploits of…Cole Young, a down-on-his-luck MMA fighter. The result was that, through no real fault of his own, Lewis Tan’s appearance in Mortal Kombat represented a failure to launch. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the forthcoming sequel to Mortal Kombat is now set to revolve around the introduction of beloved character Johnny Cage.
Which might be why Lewis Tan is starting to stretch his wings and co-star in more Direct to Video action offerings this year. Tan will very soon appear opposite Kate Beckinsale in Wildcat from director James Nunn (the filmmaker behind Scott Adkins’ excellent One Shot series). But right now you can catch him in Safe House, a politically tinged action/thriller that feels more than a little reminiscent of the glory days of Fox’s 24 TV show. The story takes place in the aftermath of a daring assault on the Vice President’s motorcade in Los Angeles and follows a bunch of government agents who end up confined to the same nearby government safe house. Director Jamie Marshall is no stranger to this genre: he’s an industry vet whose background includes second unit experience on relevant movies like Den of Thieves and Jackie Chan’s The Foreigner.
Now, given that this is a Direct to Video action flick, you might be expecting a cast of less than familiar faces, but since Safe House is one of the few recent productions of its ilk to actually shoot in Los Angeles, the cast is well populated by actors you’ll recognize from other films and shows. IMDB tells me that top-billed actor Lucien Laviscount is known for Netflix’s Emily in Paris—I’ll take their word for it—but I did indeed recognize Hannah John-Kamen (Ghost from the Ant-Man and Thunderbolts* movies), Holt McCallany (from my dearly missed David Fincher series Mindhunter), Ethan Embry (if you grew up in the 90’s, you know him from Can’t Hardly Wait and Empire Records), and Brett Cullen (the drunk Congressman from The Dark Knight Rises).
Given the qualified cast, the acting is unsurprisingly of a higher caliber than your standard DTV offering; which counts for something here, as Safe House is the kind of espionage movie that’s as much about ‘who can you trust?’ scenarios—picture characters pointing guns at each other during tense verbal exchanges—as it is actual fisticuffs. After an explosive and rather well done opening sequence which resembles an Olympus Has Fallen-type movie, albeit on a much smaller scale, the story is then confined to the titular safe house for a Bottle Episode structure (you know, like on how every TV show back in the day, you’d always have one episode per season that was confined to a single location in order to save on production costs). By the way, this is at least the third or fourth movie bearing the title Safe House to be released in 2025. It can make it a pain when you’re searching for this film on your digital platform of choice!
But I imagine you want to hear about the action. Despite being limited to a single location, the filmmakers do indeed find ways for fight scenes and shootouts to occur at a fairly regular pace, and Lewis Tan holds his own during these encounters. While the editing is a little bit too fast in its cutting for my taste—I recently watched Baby Assassins: Nice Days and the Scott Adkins flick Prisoner of War, so I’ve been a bit spoiled by good action lately—the fighting here remains a far cry from the Bourne era shakycam style. Speaking of Scott Adkins, he actually did his own Bottle Episode movie not that long ago, if you happened to see Take Cover last year. Surprisingly, I’d have to give the edge to Safe House, if only because of the relatively stacked cast (for the DTV genre) and what feels like faster pacing and more plentiful action. Lewis Tan might still have something of an uphill climb ahead of him to carve out his own niche in the crowded international action scene, but Safe House shows he can bring the dramatic intensity and swift martial arts moves when called upon. If he keeps making movies like this, I’ll keep watching them!
Z Ravas’ Rating: 6.5/10
