“Safe” Review in Brief

In which a former cage fighter and sudden widower played by Jason Statham fends off battalions of corrupt New York cops and thugs both Russian and Chinese just to protect a little girl who’s memorized a valuable code. Boring us with superfluous setup, writer-director Boaz Yakin does at least take care to spread a pulp of uniform coarseness; at its best his dialogue approximates the grimly expository B-noir patter of half a century ago. The problem, inasmuch as this stuff even deserves critique, is that it’s a trill-less thriller, without even enough cathartic brutality. Quick cuts and camera jitters make the action hard to see and therefore less worth waiting for. Badness of this sort is not offensive, just deadeningly mediocre. Catherine Chan, James Hong, Chris Sarandon, and Robert John Burke co-star.