Shelter Review: Jason Statham protects a young girl in this old-school throwback of an action film

Plot: A lone man living in ultimate isolation on a remote Scottish island finds himself taking care of a young girl who became shipwrecked there after a violent storm destroys her uncle’s boat, killing him in the process. The lone man, then, becomes identified and hunted by shadowy figures from his past while he attempted to help the girl recover. But soon, both are running for their lives from these figures. 

Review: Jason Statham is back with a new action film. If there’s ever a current actor who knows his lane and is comfortable enough to stay in it, it’s Statham. Listening to him in interviews, especially when compared to his Fast & Furious peers, it’s plain as day that the man has little ego, is unpretentious, and is just grateful to be doing what he’s doing. And that brings us to his new film, Shelter.

Statham is a star who’s kind of out-of-time. He found success in the early 2000s in the action genre with the Transporter series and was able to follow it up with the Crank series, the Expendables movies and the Fast & Furious franchise. And yet, he seems like he probably would have been more at home as one of the action stars of the late 80s and early 90s. Shelter also feels like the kind of movie that could have seen more success in that era. In short, the movie doesn’t bring that much new to the table. It’s very formulaic and has its obvious influences. 

There’s the aspect of our hero becoming the surrogate guardian of a young person, which brings to mind movies like Leon: The Professional or Logan. There’s the plot of a government organization hunting down a former operative gone rogue, like the Bourne or Mission: Impossible movies. And there’s a threat of the organization using extreme surveillance to do the hunting, like in techno-thrillers such as Enemy of the State.

Despite all these familiar elements though, the film’s director, Ric Roman Waugh, elevates the film so it all still feels engaging and entertaining. Waugh, whose past credits include Snitch, Shot Caller, Angel has Fallen and the Greenland movies, has a knack for making his films thrive when their scripts feel somewhat limited in creativity. 

This is a true throwback movie where everything is what they need to be and there’s nothing truly unnecessary thrown in to convolute the film. At just over a hundred minutes, it’s in that sweet spot — where it could’ve been a 90-minute film in the past, but scenes are allowed to breathe and elements develop without feeling rushed.

Statham, here, plays Michael Mason, who is sort of departure from his usual tough guy roles. He’s more of a broken soul this time around. He lives in seclusion and doesn’t talk to anyone but his dog, who he hasn’t even given a name to. He just works to maintain his house and the only real entertainment he has is a game of chess, in which he plays by himself. 

Mason is regularly given supplies from the mainland by a man and his niece. The niece is a teenage girl named Jesse, who is played here by Bodhi Rae Breathnach. Jesse is curious about the mystery surrounding Mason and when Mason is quick to jump to her rescue, she forms a bond with him and feels the need to rescue him from his sadness. 

Meanwhile, in London, MI6 is having to contend with a controversial new method of national security, where a program has made it so that any device with a camera can be hacked to turn into a surveillance instrument, treading on the privacy of citizens. There is a subplot of the bureacracy behind this experimental program which involves Bill Nighy and Naomi Ackie butting heads over the use of this method. However, it’s this method that identifies Statham’s Mason, who has been on the lamb from MI6, and once he’s back on the radar, squads are sent to bring him in and Statham goes into Rambo mode.

Those who are hoping for something more outlandish like Statham’s recent film The Beekeeper may be disappointed by how simpler this movie is. Shelter is more straightforward. It’s not quite character-based or plot-based. It’s more action-based, as our two leads are on the run from MI6 and we pretty much go from one action set-piece to another with a bit of drama in between. I, personally, liked it more than Statham’s A Working Man from last year as this movie kept me more engaged and the characters are people that I connected to more.

Shelter could have easily fallen into a trap of being tedious, but Ric Roman Waugh managed to make it work. The same can be said about the action. If you expect Shelter to compete with huge-budget spectacles, then you’ll be setting yourself up for disappointment. The action is relatively smaller in scope, like the first John Wick (there’s even a sequence that may remind you of the nightclub shootout), but they’re still exciting scenes and Statham is just as good as ever. 

As mentioned before, Shelter doesn’t try to be more than it needs to be. The characters are developed well enough and they give you something to root for or against when the excitement starts. However, there isn’t too much more to them than their archetypes. Bill Nighy and Naomi Ackie are reliable in their roles, but they’re not much more than government talking-heads in movies like these. Special attention must be paid to Breathnach though. She carries most of the emotional weight in the film and makes the best of what she’s given. She can be seen recently in Hamnet and I can see her becoming a formidable actress on the rise.

If you want a throwback film like they just don’t make anymore, seek Shelter. Ric Roman Waugh delivers on the action. Statham delivers on the action as well. It’s just an old-school, bone-crunching film. 

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