It takes only one shot to understand how Denzel Washington’s feeling in “Safe House.’’ He plays Tobin Frost, one of those misunderstood CIA operatives who’s “gone rogue,’’ who’s “off the reservation’’ - you can really tell because, for about an hour, his hair and goatee are beginning to go all Cornel West. For reasons this movie tries but fails to make clear, Tobin is a) named Tobin, b) extremely wanted for double-agenting, and c) in possession of information that would seem to exonerate his defection but that he needs an entire 115-minute action-thriller to bring to light.
After a tense early sequence, Tobin turns himself in at Cape Town’s American consulate (South Africa is the hot new place to film cheaply) and is dragged to an interrogation room inside one of the CIA’s so-called safe houses. He knows he’s about to be waterboarded, but he’s unfazed. That’s when we get a shot of Tobin seated with his legs crossed and his cuffed hands calmly folded, as though he’s waiting for a girlfriend to finish in a department-store fitting room. It’s a comical shot insofar as it’s supremely Denzel.
