Luke Wright (Statham) hasn't had a good couple of years. He has been kicked off the New York City Police Force for threatening to talk to I.A. about a group of dirty cops, which he follows up with a short-lived career as a MMA fighter in a local casino. When he doesn't take a dive, the Russian Mafia kills his wife and makes it look like he did it. After a year of living on the streets trying to keep a low profile, he finally decides to end it by jumping in front of a subway car. That changes though when he spies Mei (Catherine Chan), an 11 year-old Chinese girl who seems to have the wrong people looking for her.
Mei hasn't had all that great a time either. She is a child prodigy with an eidetic memory. When her talent is discovered, she is "adopted" by a Chinese gang who uses her to keep track of who in NYC owes their organization what money and how the store's profits fluctuate in order to adjust the protection money.
Mei's year of service comes to a rather dramatic head when she is told to memorize a long number. She is then supposed to go to another location to look at a different number and then a third where she is supposed to receive further instructions. The problem is, on the way to the second number, the Russians stop the Chinese transport and Mei is taken by the Russian leader. She manages to get away and runs down into the subway where Luke sees her and jumps in to save her life.
Oddly, the characters have very little screen time together, but in that time, Luke develops a strong protective relationship over Mei and when they get separated, he vows he will go through as many people as possible to get to her and free her. While Mei tries to stay alive by convincing people she didn't tell Luke anything, Luke works his way through the Chinese, Russians and even his former PD squad headed up by Captain Wolf (Robert John Burke) in order to find out what the numbers mean and how he can use them to get Mei and keep her safe.
Safe has three featurettes, one that talks about how the filmmakers worked around their small budget to get the big-screen feel, one that focused on the three different criminal organizations that are chasing Luke and Mei, and one on choreographing the gunfights in the film. All three are interesting, and the first one should be particularly intriguing to anyone looking to get into the movie industry.
Overall, Safe is a fun, turn off your brain type of movie that has a lot of action and some fun fights. The plot behind the numbers and why everyone is after Mei does a good job of tying everything together and serves as a good motivator for Statham's non-stop fighting. If this appeals to you at all, then you will want to rent Safe, but unless you are building up a Statham collection or something, it isn't really worth buying.
