Shelter
Starring: Jason Statham, Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Bill Nighy, Naomi Ackie
Director: Rick Roman Waugh
Star Rating: ★★★
Where to stream: Lionsgate Play
Jason Statham gets the best part of his career in Rick Roman Waugh’s new action thriller Shelter. This is a role tailor-made for the action star, and Shelter gives him all the features to present it in attractive and beautifully styled sets.
Base
The opening minutes are decisive. In a kind of wordless montage, we see Statham’s Mason, a lonely fugitive holed up on a remote island in the Outer Hebrides, accompanied only by his German shepherd. Every week, he is provided with supplies by a fishing trawler (Michael Schaeffer) and his orphan niece Jessie (Bodhi Rae Breathnach, who was one of Hamnett’s children), but he has no interest in forming any kind of relationship or even just saying ‘thanks’. Until disaster strikes in the bay and the boat capsizes. Jesse is rescued by Mason, who also delivers the news that his uncle has drowned. (Later, the dog gets a bad rap too, and I’m tired of watching movies where animals are used just for company and then discarded. It’s not funny.)
Mason, left to care for the young girl, must arrange for medicine and tend to her wound. This small spark of kindness backfires for Mason, as he is tracked to the mainland within a minute (thanks to social media and Reels). This immediately activates MI6 to track him down.
More secrets are revealed in a predictable sub-plot involving a former spy-chief (Bill Nighy), even as the man on the lookout for Mason is wrongly tagged as one of the terrorists who needs to be eliminated. The head of M16 (Naomi Ackie in a forgettable role) is working overtime to get it under control. Soon, killers are swarming the remote island like bees, and Mason has no other choice but to try and save himself and the orphan girl.
what works
Jason Statham knows how to play Mason like it’s his second skin, and of course, he delivers the goods in the action set pieces, which are in abundance in Shelter. The action choreography is superb, especially in a deadly nightclub shootout sequence, which offers no respite to the audience with the soaring background score. These action sequences are often violent and terrifying, but in recent years, the trend toward on-screen violence has left little room for subtlety. So, as long as the hero is alive, who’s complaining? I think the rhetoric is ultimately troubling, but there is little to no room for inquiry when there is no room left for contemplation.
If the screenplay had made an effort to leave the clichéd formula, Shelter could have been an even better improvement. The characters are often deadpan and given clichéd dialogue without any psychological depth. Jessie soon recovers from her uncle’s death, and the late revelation does not help her case in the hunt. Statham confidently uses his physical presence even when the script barely demands it, more than compensating for the deadly vengeance of a skilled fighter who needs to survive at any cost. Even within the script’s formulaic corners, Shelter remains steady and engaging.