Safe House: Post-American American Pop Culture
[This post contains spoilers to Safe House and Three Days of the Condor.]
In Safe House, Denzel Washington plays a super-spy traitor on the run from a team of killers. In U.S. custody, he becomes the charge, enemy and mentor of as-spy-ring spy Ryan Reynolds. As crappy, mindless entertainment, the movie succeeds on all fronts: it’s entertaining, mindless and crappy. Its cast of high-level professional entertainers squeezes every drop of joy it can out of the ridiculously violent and predictable script. Denzel Washington must be able to play these sorts of characters in his sleep but, to his credit, he doesn’t; he’s classy enough to show up for the paying customers and do it right. After all, that’s part of what a movie star does — deliver his familiar personae well.
What makes the film really second rate though is the fact that it’s so incredibly derivative. “This isn’t so much a movie as a list of cliches,” as my pal Christopher Tookey wrote in Britain’s Daily Mail. It seems to lift scenes from every spy movie ever made. Stylistically, its main source is The Bourne Identity. Content-wise, it’s 1975′s dated-but-still-classy Three Days of the Condor — it’s virtually a remake, hold the class.
But just as interesting as the similarities between Safe House and Condor are the differences, the marks of thirty plus years. In both pictures, a low level CIA agent is isolated and on the run after his unit is brutally exterminated. In both pictures it turns out the bad guy is within the agency itself. In both pictures, the resolution includes our hero leaking the agency’s misdeeds to the world. In Condor, Robert Redford spreads the word through the New York Times, which was a newspaper in those days. In Safe House, Reynolds gives the info to CNN, from which I guess it then leaks out to a news agency and becomes public.
But here is what’s different. Although Three Days of the Condor is a stridently left wing movie, its hero is a patriot. The stateless assassin on his trail tells him to abandon America and work only for pay: “It’s almost peaceful. No need to believe in either side, or any side. There is no cause. There’s only yourself.” But Redford replies mildly, “I was born in the United States. I miss it when I’m away too long.”
“A pity,” says the assassin.
“I don’t think so,” says Redford.
As love of country goes, it’s not much, but for sophisticates like the LA-New York set, it’s downright George M. Cohan.
Denzel, on the other hand, plays a traitorous dirtbag, sympathetic as the script and the performance try to make him. Alienated by the misdeeds of Washington DC (and who isn’t — though why these left-wingers always pick on the left wing CIA is beyond me!), he is selling information to the worst possible actors — Iran, China, anyone who’ll pay him. When he comes into possession of a list of western espionage crimes compiled by the Israelis for blackmail purposes (because, as every left-winger knows, the Jews secretly run everything), the CIA tries to stop him at all costs. When he accuses Reynolds of wrapping himself in the flag, Reynolds has no response whatsoever. One Condor-like line would have changed everything here: “It’s a good flag,” for instance. Though Washington ultimately urges Reynolds, “Be better than me,” there’s no sense that that better might include loyalty to one’s freer-than-average country.
No. This is Condor for the Julian Assange generation. There’s no loyalty to anything but the hero’s own sense of virtue and nobility. Whereas Redford exposes the CIA because he’s forced to — it’s his only chance to save his own life — Reynolds actually puts his life in danger to expose the agency. He would have been safer working through channels to right any wrongs that had been done, but that would imply trust in the American system, and we wouldn’t want that. There’s not even any thought that the CIA may have overstepped its bounds for good and noble purposes, or to keep the world safe. Nah. That couldn’t happen.
This is leftist American entertainment with an eye on the international market — a market that would gladly root for us if we’d only let it (witness the overseas success of the patriotic Avengers), but which is instead fed a steady diet of self-hatred and preening cosmopolitanism.
I wonder: in the Post-American imagination of the left, what do they think will replace western nation-states with their libertarian traditions and constitutions? The UN? With its leadership of scoundrels, murderers and unelected high rollers? An inherently virtuous international community singing Kumbaya? A John Lennon utopia? Or better yet a Michael Bloomberg utopia? Imagine there’s no soda! It’s easy if you try!
They don’t know. They just know we’re bad. Which raises another question. How can you tell stories about heroes, if you don’t really know what they’re fighting for?
Just how influential are movies on the cultural/political life (minds) of a society?
Very. Extremely.
Especially for young people who are trying to learn about their world … but not only for the young.
The majority of people who watch these films — think they’re truth — or based on true knowledge/stories. They have no idea that it’s all just made up out of thin air — and the point of view is just that of the artists involved — and maybe a kind of “floating” groupthink. They have no idea that they are slowly being indoctrinated, step-by-step. I know cause I used to be one of them — well, not completely, but in a way. (See Yuri Bezmenov videos and another on The Frankfurt School and Political Correctness — easy to find on Search sites.)
American artists and “intellectuals” have ruined the reputation — here at home and throughout the world — of their own country, with their bent imaginations and outright lies. Seeking to show they are so … in the know … and sophisticated (in the worst sense).
Yes, there are flaws in our system. More and more flaws of late as we move further Left. And sometimes there are and have been mistakes in judgment made — and occasionally (more rarely than not) some things just … bad … But, they were mostly done because it was the only available choice for survival in a nasty and much worse world.
But they are exaggerated as if they were the “whole” of it. Especially in these “movies” and The New York Times and it’s clones.
There is still so very much excellent and … best. And it’s set up to correct and check itself — an incredibly brilliant set up of a “system.”
(I wonder if in history there has ever been a really decent society like ours (well, there’s never been one like ours, but I mean, a good one) that was brought down to ruination by the influence of it’s own “philosophers” — especially because to them, it was less than perfect (though much better than all other existing (and imaginary) choices.))
Whenever one of my left-leaning friends throws up some nasty factoid in my face — I ask them — “… as opposed to what? What “perfect” system — with perfect people — do you think would do better than this one?” They usually have no answer. I hope it makes them think about it.
I was wondering why a movie with two major stars in it could get so much publicity before it’s release, then nothing. Now it’s already out on dvd and I was actually planning on watching it. Not now, no way. I respect both actors, but these story lines are really starting to wear thin. I think instead I’ll watch The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man I & II again. Well, maybe just the first one. Who knows? I might even watch The Avengers again. I hear it’s pretty good.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but if you’d like an actioner with at least a nod toward character development, a clear comparison of Western values to religious tribalism and savagery, unapologetic Christianity, manliness, heroism and American exceptionalism, try MACHINE GUN PREACHER. And it has a basis in fact and reality as opposed to liberal nihilism. It’s not very funny, though. Ah well, can’t have everything.
I will put this movie on my to see list — sounds like the old movie traitor from your description.
As an official one trick pony will someone, please, do a screenplay of the Imperial Russian Baltic Sea Fleet’s round the world voyage to it’s destruction at Tsushima in ‘(19)04? With CGI as it is today, you wouldn’t even have to have models built. (although I’d appreciate it if the effort was made…)