Safe House

Fittingly timed considering Canada's conservative government's introduction of the hated Bill C-30, Daniel Espinosa's new action flick Safe House presents a young CIA agent tasked with delivering a rogue fugitive possessing private governmental information to an undisclosed location in order to bring him to justice.

For agent Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds), it's an opportunity to demonstrate his prowess and procure a more invigorating post.

For longtime fugitive (and former CIA agent) Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington), it's all just par for the course.

Frost has in his possession a file implicating several international intelligence agents in criminal activities. A mercenary by the name of Vargas (Fares Fares) seeks to pry it from his cold dead hands. Seeing nowhere to run, Frost turns himself in at an American Embassy in South Africa. He's taken to be interrogated at a safe house in Cape Town of which Weston is the "housekeeper." Vargas comes calling shortly thereafter, leaving Weston and Frost wondering which CIA agent coughed up the whereabouts of their hidden location as they frantically escape.

Into the unknown.

The film's anti-warrantless-police-online-surveillance agenda is highlighted during one of the chase scenes. Frost and Weston are fleeing Vargas and his men on the rooftops of a quiet shantytown. Some of the roofs aren't particularly sturdy and can't withstand the shock of the sudden tumultuous weight. Thus, as people simply try and enjoy their private life, mercenaries, fugitives, and intelligence agents come crashing unannounced into their homes, and then leave quickly, after having obtrusively disrupted their lives, in the pursuit of disparate self-serving agendas.

How does this relate to the ways in which Canada's conservative government has labelled environmentalist groups opposed to the development of the Northern Gateway pipeline as radicals within Canada and Bill C-30?

Well, it's cheaper to operate a mine/engage in oil and gas exploration/build a pipeline if you don't have to worry about reclaiming the land or behaving responsibly. But if you don't responsibly reclaim the land you create a toxic mess that leaves the area uninhabitable while people continue to live there. If you introduce a toxic substance into an ecosystem it has a lasting toxic effect.

Environmentalist groups seek to mitigate this effect so that such lands remain habitable and their drinking waters aren't irreparably polluted. If you are an environmentalist who has been labelled a radical by the government (as opposed to being labelled a responsible citizen who simply wants to have access to clean drinking water and doesn't want to have to clean up an industrial mess for the next century or so), whose to stop the police from monitoring your productive conscientious online activity and demonizing the sights you visit?

Demonizing is a strong word but so is radical and labelling environmentalist groups critical of the Northern Gateway pipeline development as radical is a form of demonizing, especially considering that a percentage of our elected opposition members of parliament are critical of the Northern Gateway pipeline, therefore I don't think I'm taking too much of a leap in thinking the police, through invasively monitoring your online activity after the passage of Bill C-30 because you are an environmentalist radical, can then take the next step of demonizing you within your community (hypothetically, some shitty anti-environmentalist law is passed after the passage of Bill C-30 [The Economic Stewardship Bill or something], it isn't debated in the House of Commons so media coverage is minimized, people aren't provided with the facts concerning the law and after someone breaks it they simply think that person's broken the law and are therefore a problem, the police having arrested the individual after monitoring their online activity without a warrant and discovering that by visiting a specific targeted sight they have engaged in radical illegal activity. They arrest that person, local media picks up on it, they are demonized within their community).

You think this is ridiculous? I repeat, labelling environmentalists critical of the Northern Gateway pipeline development as radicals is ridiculous, throughly undemocratic, and grossly irresponsible. Simply because they wanted to mitigate the environmental impact of industrial activity in their country in order to live a healthier life.

Environmentalists want jobs too and understand the necessity of mining and oil and gas exploration. They just want to ensure that it's done responsibly. The reason we have an environmental lobby is that these activities were not undertaken responsibly for centuries. It is not radical to believe that they will suddenly be responsibly undertaken without the influence of an environmentalist lobby.

In Safe House, Weston turns the situation around and releases Frost's file to the media who then begins to vilify the intelligence agents/governmental representatives mentioned within. Unfortunately, this ending indirectly supports Bills such as Bill C-30. Here we have a situation where invading the privacy of several organizations and making their private information public has positive results. By creating such a situation and making it seem cathartic, Safe House sinisterly supports the intrusive agendas of those seeking to freely invade our privacy and monitor our online activity by 'subliminally advertising' an example which motivates the invasion of privacy.

Although the roof crashing chase was a nice diversion.