Starring Ryan Reynolds, Denzel Washington, Vera Farmiga • Directed by Daniel Espinosa  • Age restriction: 16V • Releases 10 February

Woah! Isn't that Eastern Bazaar? And how exactly do you turn out of the CBD and straight into Woodstock? I totally need to learn that route, will make my morning commute a lot easier. And hey, a train station at the Cape Town Stadium wouldn't be the worst idea in the world... In fact, how about a collective email to Helen Zille?

Part of the immense fun factor of Safe House – the latest skop, skiet en donner CIA film out of Hollywood – is the fact that it is almost entirely based in South Africa, and Cape Town specifically. There is a lot of satisfaction in seeing a car chase on the N2, a gun fight on the steps of the stadium and a sprint on the rooftops of Langa. It brings a wonderful local is lekker feeling to the big screen – and man, does Cape Town look extra cool through Hollywood's eyes.

> Watch the Safe House trailer here.

Safe House stars Ryan Reynolds as Matt Weston, a young and ambitious CIA agent whose current mission has been a year-long stint as a "housekeeper" at a quiet CIA safe house in Cape Town – where the American intelligence agency isn't really supposed to have a presence. He spends his work day sitting in a very empty apartment, throwing a ball against the wall, his afternoons and nights romancing his beautiful French girlfriend. But Matt is bored, and desperately wants to prove himself, and knows that he won't do it sitting around waiting for something to happen.

But, of course, something does. Matt gets his first "house guest" – a very dangerous rogue CIA agent, who has been on the run for a decade. Tobin Frost – played by Denzel Washington – has simply walked into the American embassy in Cape Town and handed himself in. All the bigwigs in Langley are understandably jumpy, and a team is flown from Jo'burg to Cape Town to interrogate Tobin at the safe house. Tobin is a master manipulator, and Matt is warned to keep his distance, but things go awry when a group of heavily-armed mercenaries storm the safe house, killing everybody with the exception of Matt and Tobin. Matt is tasked with getting Tobin to the next closest safe house – but not everything is as clean cut as it seems.

Directed by Swedish-born filmmaker Daniel Espinosa, Safe House is a surprisingly enjoyable – if extremely "safe" and predictable – action flick. Espinosa has favoured a vibrant, kinetic style for his action thriller, which is made all the more entertaining by the chemistry between its two strong leads. Washington is an oddly comforting presence on the screen, despite the strange blend of a grandfatherly figure and a dangerous, unpredictable, manipulative spy. Despite the fact that Tobin is essentially Matt's prisoner, he seems to take Matt under his wing – and it's in these moments of purported honesty that Washington's strength shines through.  

Reynolds is given much more to work with in the script, and he does so amiably and competently. He is pitch-perfect as the idealistic, nervous newbie, stumbling from one disaster to the next with many a mini-meltdown in between. Reynolds also ekes out a few sentences in Afrikaans (we'll give him points, even though it sounded more like a blend of German and Dutch) and is a blend of the distressed, insecure and vulnerable in comparison to Tobin's earned assurance. In fact, when they reveal that Matt's strength is in linguistics, he suddenly seems even more suited to being a desk jockey than a field agent.

In fact, thinking back, you're not entirely sure how Matt survives the film. It doesn't really matter though – most of the girls in the preview audience were left swooning after his first appearance (which also happened to be a shirtless sequence) and most of the guys were quite content with the high body count. (Seriously, you could count on half a hand who survives Safe House all the way through).

But it is predictable down to a fault – you could pretty much count in the "shock" twists and deaths – and the script by first-timer David Guggenheim is the film's weak point. It's a little unsure of itself, promising great heights and then never delivering. The film's big moments are laid out for you, you're told what to think and how to think it, and there are certain things that don't quite make a lot of sense. We don't really understand some of the characters' motivations, and the film's ending seems a little anti-climactic after the pace of the film itself. It doesn't matter in the slightest, though – you're not here for an Oscar-winning script. You're here for action. And the action is good.

The choreography and stunt sequences are superbly shot and edited, and the audience is simply swept from one moment to the next, with scarcely room to breathe. The film is slightly overlong and could have benefited from a paring down of about ten or fifteen minutes, but Espinosa's kinetic style coupled with Oliver Wood's superbly gritty and brilliantly colourful cinematography infuses Safe House with relentless energy, and takes Cape Town from our favourite chilled-out city, to a slick Hollywood star. And it's awesome.

> Watch the Safe House trailer and book tickets for the film here.