The Safe Film

[Erminia Scharnberg]

Safeis a 2012 American action thriller film written and directed by Boaz Yakin, produced by Lawrence Bender, Dana Brunetti and Joseph Zolfo and starring Jason Statham, Chris Sarandon, Robert John Burke and James Hong. In the film, Luke Wright, an ex-cop and former cage fighter, winds up protecting a gifted child being chased by the Russian mafia, Chinese Triads and corrupt NYPD officers.

Luke Wright, an ex-cop and cage fighter, unintentionally wins a fixed fight. Emile Docheski, the head of the Russian mafia, tells his son Vassily and his men to kill Wright's pregnant wife as punishment and then promise to kill anyone to whom he speaks regularly. Luke leaves his life behind, thus becoming a homeless tramp. Mei, a young mathematical prodigy in China, is kidnapped by men working for Triad boss Han Jiao, who wishes to use Mei as a mental calculator to eliminate his criminal enterprise's traceable digital footprint. Han sends her to New York City in the care of brutal gangster Quan Chang.

One year later, Han arrives from China, asking Mei to memorize a long number. On the way to retrieve a second one, their vehicle is ambushed by the Russian mafia. Mei is taken to Emile, who demands the number, but she refuses. Before they can further interrogate her, they are interrupted by police sent by the corrupt Captain Wolf, who works for Han. Mei escapes during the confusion and is chased by the Russians to a nearby subway station, where Luke is contemplating suicide. Recognizing Chemyakin as one of the men who killed his wife and seeing Mei's distress, Luke boards the train and kills Chemyakin and the other Russians. Mei flees at the next stop, only to be stopped by two corrupt detectives, working for Wolf.

Luke arrives and incapacitates them, thus convincing Mei of his good intentions before he also dispatches some Russians. Hiding in a hotel, Mei explains the number to Luke, who guesses that it is the code to a combination safe. However, Quan tracks Mei down through her cell phone and escapes with her during a diversion as Luke fights through Quan's men. Across town, Captain Wolf meets with Mayor Danny Tremello, who has learned that Luke is involved and cautions Wolf, explaining that Luke was not a regular cop, but a black ops hitman, who was loaned by the government as a favor to Tremello by friends in the CIA shortly after 9/11, along with his former partner Alex Rosen. Luke and Alex assassinated several crime bosses as an effort to impose order and Luke quit after exposing Wolf's detective squad as dirty cops.

Luke is living a life of exile as atonement for the things he did for the government. Using Chemyakin's phone, Luke sets up Vassily and kidnaps him. Emile reluctantly accepts a deal for his son's life, explaining that Mei's number unlocks a heavily guarded safe in Chinatown with $30 million, though he does not know the contents of a second safe. Needing a team to get to the safe, Luke recruits Wolf and his detectives. Together, they fight through numerous Triad gangsters to reach the safe. As Luke is about to open it, Wolf attempts to betray him, but Luke kills the remaining detectives and takes Wolf hostage. Using the money, Luke bribes Alex, who is now the mayor's aide and boyfriend, into rescuing Mei. Alex reveals the second safe belongs to the mayor, containing a disc with data on every crime syndicate in New York. Alex meets and kills Quan and his men as Mei watches.

Meanwhile, Luke assaults the mayor and retrieves a copy of the mayor's disc. Alex and Luke arrange a meeting, but Luke refuses to surrender the money and instead suggests that they settle it with a fight. Before they can begin, Mei shoots Alex, wounding him and Luke finishes him off. In the aftermath, Luke gives $50,000 to Wolf and instructs him to return Vassily to his father unharmed. He sends the remainder of the money to Han to buy Mei's freedom, threatening to ruin Han's operations should Han try to recover Mei. Han leaves New York in disgust as Luke hides multiple copies of the disc throughout the city. Luke and Mei make plans to leave the city and head west to Seattle, where Mei can enroll in a school for gifted children. When Mei asks if they are finally safe, Luke responds that they will take it one day at a time.

Safe was announced on May 6, 2010.[3] The film is the first in a three-film distribution deal between IM Global (who also produced and fully financed) and Lionsgate, the other two being Pete Travis' Dredd and Simon West's Protection. Lawrence Bender Productions, Trigger Street Productions, Automatik Entertainment, and 87Eleven Action Design also produced.[4]

On a $30 million budget, principal photography took place from October to December 2010 in Philadelphia and New York City.[5][6] Filming scenes in Philadelphia on Broad Street was done on the nights and early mornings of November 17, 18 and 19.[6] A class from a Catholic School in downtown Philadelphia was used for a scene depicting a class in China.

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 60% based on 114 reviews, with an average rating of 5.70/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "While hard-hitting and violently inventive, Safe ultimately proves too formulaic to set itself apart from the action thriller pack -- including some of its star's better films."[9] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 55 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[10]

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone said that "the trouble with Safe is that you know where it's going every step of the way". He also added that "Between the fists, kicks, bullets, car chases and broken trachea, the movie could have milked the sentiment of that relationship until you puked. But Statham and the scrappy Chan play it hard. The restraint becomes them. Statham is still playing it safe in Safe, but vulnerability is showing through the cracks."[11] Claudia Puig of USA Today gave the film a moderately positive review, saying that "Yakin's slick direction, marked by quick cuts, unstinting energy and a lack of sentimentality, makes the action scenes satisfying," but thought the dialogue was "riddled with clichs."[12]

Robert Abele of the Los Angeles Times scored 3/5 stars, saying "Yakin gives his star plenty of room to look mean, think fast, drive faster, punch, quip, mow down and charismatically bond with the most imperiled child character in screen memory."[13] Kim Newman gave 4/5 stars in Empire, describing it as "A rough, exhausting, exhilarating action picture with a payoff which would have delighted Sam Fuller or Howard Hawks".[14]

Safe is a 1995 American psychological horror film written and directed by Todd Haynes and starring Julianne Moore. Set in 1987, it follows a suburban housewife in Los Angeles whose monotonous life is abruptly changed when she becomes sick with a mysterious illness which she believes is caused by the environment around her.

Carol White is a housewife living in an affluent suburb of Los Angeles. She passes her days with activities like gardening, aerobics, and seeing friends. Her marriage and family life appear stable but sterile, and her friends are polite but distant. Following the renovation of the family's home, Carol starts experiencing physical symptoms in everyday situations: She coughs uncontrollably when breathing exhaust fumes from a nearby truck while driving, has breathing difficulties at a baby shower, and suffers from a nosebleed while getting a perm at a hair salon. As her symptoms worsen, she becomes convinced that they are triggered by exposure to chemicals. Finally, she has a complete collapse while at her dry cleaners, which is being fumigated with pesticides.

Doctors have no idea how to cure or help Carol and state that she is physically healthy. She attends some psychotherapy sessions, but her symptoms are not alleviated. She finds that she is very alone with her condition when her community behaves indifferently towards her. Accepting that she can no longer function in her current life, she leaves everything behind and moves to Wrenwood, a new-age desert community for people with environmental illnesses. Wrenwood is led by Peter Dunning, an author who extols self-help to the residents.

Even in a community of people with similar health issues, Carol seems to become more isolated even as she asserts that she is getting better. Lesions appear on her face and she increasingly relies on a breathing apparatus. She moves into an insulated dome separated from the rest of the community, where she looks into a mirror and says "I love you" to herself.

Haynes first heard about "environmental illness" in 1991 on a TV magazine program that referred to it as "20th Century Disease".[8] He and producer Vachon interviewed organizations that advocate for people who have environmental illness, such as Response Team for the Chemically Injured in Atascadero, California and The Chemical Connection in Wimberley, Texas,[9][10] and in fact the monologue that Carol gives during her birthday party was based on transcripts of one of the interviews from Wimberley.[11] Haynes also did research into New Age healing practices, and was especially interested in the work of Louise Hay, whose books became popular among gay men during the AIDS epidemic by telling them that self-love would heal their illness.[10] The fictional Wrenwood was inspired by a yoga retreat at Kripalu Center.[10] He also got inspiration from Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Boy in the Plastic Bubble.[12]

For the script, Haynes has said that the conceptual origin involved setting up barriers that prevent the audience from getting emotionally close to the character of Carol, which was a concept he explored again in Far from Heaven.[13] He used political red herrings to make the audience trust certain characters at first, such as the leader of Wrenwood being a gay man. Since Haynes himself is gay, he thought the audience would expect the gay character to be trustworthy.[14]

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