Mud

Mud is a sticky, sweaty and swampy coming of age film about two boys, a man and a boat in a tree. Two adventurous teenage boys who live on the Mississippi river find a boat up a tree on a small deserted island, miles from anywhere. Excited at the prospect of their new, secluded secret hideout, the boys soon discover that the boat is in fact inhabited by a strange man who calls himself Mud. Initially wary of the stranger, the boys get close to the man and help him first by bringing food and then with plans to complete the Herzogian task of bringing the boat down from the tree. This is all set against a gritty, humid backdrop with a hint that something in the air smells like death.

I thought I’d missed my chance to see Mud at the cinema but found a midday screening I was able to slip into on a day off work. I’d been looking forward to it as the trailer looked promising and I’ve become a fan of Matthew McConaughey’s ‘McConaissance’. Having now seen it I can report that for me the film worked well but there was just something that niggled with me. I can’t put my finger on the problem but it wasn’t long before I was fidgety and bored.

Safe House

I don’t know what I was hoping for with Safe House but I certainly wasn’t expecting so little. With films like Taken setting the bar very low these days for the action genre it seems that a whole parade of films are following in its ridiculous wake and Safe House is but one of these movies. Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) is a CIA Safe House Operative in Cape Town. His role involves waiting around a secure house in case the CIA ever needs to move a criminal, terrorist etc. Twelve months into the posting Matt’s first house guest arrives in the shape of Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington) a highly skilled rogue CIA Agent who is being chased by a menagerie of vaguely foreign looking killers. Frost repeatedly ditches Weston but he never stops hunting the rogue agent down and more nonsense I’m bored.

Safe House was more full of holes than holy water from the holy land and had the most obvious twist since Rock ‘n’ Roll. It is such a stupid movie that I can barely bring myself to discuss it. It is never exciting or interesting and beside solid but unspectacular central performances there is literally nothing of merit in the entire 110 minutes.