Not Safe for Work

Not Safe for Work (2014)

A straight up office building thriller. Yeah, like that's a genre already—well, it feels like it. Isn't that what "Die Hard" was? This one tones it down and it becomes practically believable. Almost too believable, so that it's a bit routine after awhile, even if you're still on the edge of your seat.

So imagine you're the last one to leave the office—almost last—and the elevators stop. And then you see someone with a gun, and the computers go nuts, and the lights flicker. So you have a nightmare, trapped, no way to contact help. Even your cellphone ends up, of course, in the hands of the bad guy.

And what a bad guy he is, a seemingly cool customer with no qualms killing anyone for any reason. What's a little blood when a pharmaceutical company has a lawsuit on the fritz? And so it goes, running through offices and hiding behind desks.

Can this last for a couple hours? Almost! It works on some level. It doesn't work on a lot of other levels, for sure, like caring very much about anyone. (This is where both Bruce Willis and the script of "Die Hard" have something special going on, whatever you think of that Hollywood blockbuster.) Here, you more or less know what's going to happen, and then by the end you are sure. But getting there isn't half bad. Half, at least.

The ambitious legal assistant Tom Miller (JJ Feild) works at the Rosen, Byres and Emmerich Attorneys at Law and secretly dates the gorgeous clerk Anna (Eloise Mumford). His company has presently two major cases: Hartcourt vs. Denning Pharmaceutical, against a powerful corporation, and Gambizzi Case, against a mafia family. On the eve of the judgment of the Hartcourt case, Alan Emmerich (Christian Clemenson) releases all the employees early in the afternoon and he also fires Tom for snooping around the Gambizzi case. When Tom is leaving the building with Anna, he sees a man leaving a suitcase on the floor and another man wearing a suit taking the suitcase and going to the 34th floor of the building. Tom decides to follow him and soon he discovers that he man is actually a hit-man. Soon Tom is trapped on the floor with the killer since his access card is deactivated. Who hired the hit-man?

"Not Safe for Work" is a low-budget thriller that works reasonably well. The beginning is too rushed, with little explanation about the cases that the company is working. The mouse and cat game between Tom and the killer has few moments of tension, and a total lack of humor. Unfortunately the conclusion is predictable. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Negócios Mortais" ("Mortal Businesses")

There are so many tasteless crap big budget movies that not only do not entertain me but I can't even stomach watching them! Unbelievably they not only make into theaters but make money too!

With that in mind I give this film high marks for doing the job of entertaining me. It was not made up of a bunch of over the top special effects which in my opinion typically make a movie insultingly unbelievable to the point taking away from the entertainment value (with the exception of sci-fi when it actually be called for and needed)

This one was filled with suspense and had a reasonable level of action to go with the plot. It screams for a sequel but it sounds to me like it did not impress a lot of people so I am thinking it will be one more disappointment in that department joining a long list of other movies that were half told stories obviously written with the ideal that there should be MORE to come!

I am so disappointed with the crappy comedies and gore films that audiences seem to eat up (I am hoping these audiences are mainly adolescent/teens that just don't know any better yet?) ...because it so seems like the more moronic or over the top ridiculous something is, the more likely it is to financially succeed and spawn a parade of sequels that are even worse! trash franchise for the lowlife and teen audiences?

Well... I can not "beat em" but I certainly am not about to "join em" !

Visibly low budget & minus wham-bam special effects, Not Safe For Work relies instead on acting and story. This is a very effective film.

Have you noticed how there is a new generation of worry, fear, threat concerning the power of corporations and big business in our collective lives? Most effectively, in Margin Call (10+), but elsewhere across a broad spectrum of movies US & otherwise. Not Safe For Work is a significant contribution to this contemporary genre: Don't Trust Business.

The two key male leads in this story are specially strong, most significantly the villain -- aka "The Killer" -- played by J. J. Feild, who exhibits a powerfully creepy calmness in voice and body language. His evil -- the banality of evil -- signifies the rot at work in the world of business itself. Max Minghella, playing the key office worker, has a true Jack Lemmon charm as the wily office schmo who's not such a looser after all.

This story happens to be about US business. But corporations & capitalism being what they are nowadays in our global, post-Cold War world; this business tale could be about China, Brazil, Germany, or Whathaveyou. Like a fine police procedural by Ed McBain, this plot is easily transferable to most other modern cultures.

Finally the fact that the heroes escape and yet do not (if you haven't seen it, I don't want to spoil the plot for you) shows how serious is its moral and political intent. Not Safe For Work is an intriguing incrimination. How can one escape from where business life is now? The answer is left deliciously hanging in Not Safe For Work. Yes, folks, we are unsafe. Try to find a way out. Just try.

"An office worker is trapped inside the building where a killer is on the loose." This is the summary for Not Safe for Work that is on IMDb. Nothing more is given about the plot and I assumed this film was sort of like a Halloween or Friday 13th movie with some maniac chasing a poor guy about the building trying to kill him. Fortunately, this is NOT what this film turned out to be and the plot is MUCH more complex and satisfying than just some maniac murdering folks. Instead, it's a pretty good little film—one that is not all about gratuitous violence. In fact, several times the film did have people killed but the director, Joe Johnston, chose not to show the violence in all its nastiness— something I really appreciated. Instead, this film is also about WHY all this was occurring instead of just about the killing—a smart decision in my opinion.

The film is told from the viewpoint of Tom (Max Minghella)—a lowly paralegal at a HUGE law firm. Because Tom is ambitious, however, he's gotten on the bad side of his bosses. They just want him to shut up and do his job. His desire to rise above the masses of paralegals gets him fired early on in the film. However, as he's leaving the RBE law firm for, supposedly, the last time, he notices something strange—a hand off between two folks in the lobby. In other words, as one guy is leaving the building, another brings him an attaché case and 'accidentally' leaves it behind and the guy entering picks it up and proceeds up the elevators to the firm. That's certainly odd and Tom follows to see what's happening. Once there, he's shocked to see it's MUCH more serious than he thought, as he sees this man with the briefcase shoot one of the office workers in cold blood. Fortunately, the place is just about empty and the body count is low…and perhaps that is why the man is there at that time. Regardless, Tom is scared to death but cannot leave as well because the killer somehow has managed to disable most of the electronics in the building. The killer's very systematic and he clearly is NOT some random maniac—some sort of conspiracy is clearly afoot. So how is poor Tom to survive—especially when the killer realizes that there is someone else in the office?

Not Safe for Work turns out to be a very taut and well executed thriller that is much more like Die Hard than Friday the 13th! The direction is very nice and the acting quite believable and I do recommend you see it. I especially appreciate the rather dark conspiratorial angle about the film and the ending that is a bit reminiscent of the old Warren Beatty film The Parallax View.

My only complaint, and you may not notice or care (since I am an obsessive detail person when it comes to film plots), but at one point in the film another woman is shot and killed by the killer. However, she tried to fight back and tried to shoot the guy a gun hidden in her purse. The killer did not know that Tom was hiding in the room. So after the killer left the room, why didn't Tom bother to get the gun from the dead woman?!?! This is the sort of thing that doesn't ruin the film but makes me wonder how they missed this. Unfortunately, this sort of thing happens a lot in films and it's a cliché I really dislike.

Despite my small rant, see the film. It's worth your time and is awfully good and just goes to show you that you don't need mega-stars and mega-budgets to make a good film.