Denzel Washington is a Cape Town cop

When Hollywood comes to our doorstep they use Cape Town as a cheap stand in for somewhere else. We don't get to see our city on screen; represented authentically.

Denzel Washington in "Safe House" (Film still).

The trailer for the new Denzel Washington-Ryan Reynolds feature “Safe House,” just got released officially on the interwebs yesterday. The film centers around rogue CIA agent Tobin Frost (Washington in Training Day mode again) on the run from a generic group of bad guys. Reynolds’ character, the CIA safe house’s caretaker in Cape Town, has been given the task of moving him to the next secure location. Cue endless chase scenes and explosions.

The reason why I’m excited about this is that it is shot and set in Cape Town.

Usually when Hollywood comes to our doorstep they use Cape Town as a cheap stand in for downtown LA, Rio, or anywhere else in Africa. We rarely get to see our city on screen, and almost never is it represented authentically.

It’s fun to see not just the expected swooping helicopter shots over Table Mountain, but a chase scene in Lower Main Road Woodstock; De Waal drive (with its view of Table Bay) and Denzel dressed up in South African Police uniform. Nice use of the Kanye West/ Jay – Z track “No Church in the Wild” as well.

That said, time will tell if the film is any good. I have hope.

Further Reading

And do not hinder them

We hardly think of children as agents of change. At the height of 1980s apartheid repression in South Africa, a group of activists did and gave them the tool of print.

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Stripped of its veneer of nuance, Noah Feldman’s essay in ‘Time’ is another attempt to silence opponents of the Israeli state by smearing them as anti-Jewish racists.