Daniel Espinosa - Movieline

Quick Take || BY S.T. VanAirsdale || 02 23 2012 9:20 AM

Safe House Director's Previous Feature Finally Hitting Theaters

It's only taken a few years, but the success of director Daniel Espinosa's Safe House means that Harvey Weinstein is finally ready to let the filmmaker's Swedish-language hit Easy Money -- née Snabba Cash -- off his shelf on July 27. The distributor cited the eventual Stateside publication of the film's source novel (as opposed to Safe House's $83 million-and-counting domestic haul) as his motivation: “We love the movie, but we needed the book to be out here,” he told the LAT. Right. As always with Harvey, all release dates are subject to change and/or revocation at any time, so remember to mark your calendars in pencil. [LAT]

Review || BY Stephanie Zacharek || 02 09 2012 3:30 PM

REVIEW: Damn! My Eyes! Who Hit Safe House with the Ugly Stick?

Safe House is a twisted claw of a movie, a picture so visually ugly that, to borrow a line from Moms Mabley, it hurt my feelings. Let’s forget, for a moment, about the sub-sub-sub-Training Day plot, in which a wily old-coot operative played by Denzel Washington simultaneously annoys and educates spring-chicken CIA agent Ryan Reynolds. The plot mechanics don’t matter much. What does matter is the inexplicable horror of how lousy this film looks. Movies aren’t strictly a visual medium -- they’re too complicated for that -- but there’s something wrong when the only thing you can think of while watching a picture is, “Damn! My eyes!”
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