Jason Statham is back in his latest action movie, Shelter, and while it does everything you’d expect from a Statham movie, it also doesn’t do anything new or interesting.
Statham plays Michael Mason, a former British black-ops operator who has been in self-imposed exile at a remote lighthouse on a Scottish island. His only contact with the outside world is a trawler operated by a young girl named Jessie (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) that delivers him supplies. When a vicious storm hits during a supply run, Mason rescues Jessie, whose uncle dies when the trawler goes down. Mason takes Jessie in to help her recover from an injured ankle and is forced to go to the mainland to get medical supplies, where he’s caught on a cellphone and triggers a response from MI6’s new covert tracking software T.H.E.A. When armed operatives arrive to eliminate Mason, he takes them out and flees with Jessie to find a way to get her to safety and take out the people hunting them. The plot is nothing you haven’t seen before: a grim black-ops assassin regains his humanity when a new person enters his life, and an evil covert operation looks to clean up loose ends. You can pretty much predict every beat of the movie before it happens, even if you have just a passing familiarity with action movies. Statham is doing his stoic badass thing, but he’s even more grim than usual, especially compared to the insanity of recent Statham entries like The Beekeeper and A Working Man, where he seemed to be playing things up to match the energy of the movie. Bill Nighy is in bad guy mode again for Shelter, but appears to be doing the bare minimum required compared to some of his other, more memorable villainous turns. Brethnach does a great job as the heart of the movie, giving it emotional heft even as it goes through its familiar paces.
Action-wise, Shelter also doesn’t do much to distinguish itself. The action is solid and serviceable throughout, but there’s not much creativity or originality on display. One standout sequence is a rural car chase where Mason and Jessie try to outrun an assassin dispatched by Nighy, and it feels inspired by rally racing as the cars race down a dirt road covered in bumps and jumps, which offers something unique. Again, compared to the over-the-top insanity of other recent Statham entries like The Beekeeper, this feels a bit bland in comparison.
Shelter is fine, but it’s a by-the-numbers Statham entry that doesn’t do much to try and distinguish itself from other, similar action movies. If you’re a Statham completionist, it might be worth catching on streaming, but it’s not one you need to rush out to the theaters to see.
