Shelter Review

Shelter will be released in theaters on January 30.

“No man is an island, entire of itself,” John Donne once wrote, “every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” That’s certainly the thematic core and literal setup for Shelter,

This time he’s playing Michael Mason, a former elite assassin for the British government who’s hiding out on a gloomy island in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland with his dog sidekick, playing chess against himself and pencil drawing to pass the time. There’s a lot of staring out at the sea and into space, as well as one-sided conversations with his mutt to hammer home his self-inflicted isolation.

That is, until he’s forced to save precocious orphan Jessie (Bodhi Rae Breathnach), who’s been delivering food to Mason by way of her uncle’s trawler. On her way back to shore, her uncle’s boat gets caught in a storm, leading to quite a preposterous “save the cat” scenario when he urges Jessie to return in a rowboat against 10-foot waves – seriously bad caregiving, unc! But there is some joy in seeing the former competitive diver battle the sea in a knitted jumper.

With Jessie injured and in need of medical supplies, Mason must re-enter society, where the plot unfolds, and a venerated cast of British actors enters the frame. It shows just how much affection there is for Jason Statham back home that Bill Nighy, Naomi Ackie and Harriet Walters all signed on to this film. Their presence as former MI6 chief Steven Manafort, his replacement Roberta Frost, and Prime Minister Fordham, respectively, does bring some gravitas to his typically low-brow proceedings.

Fordham and Manafort represent the murky machinations of the establishment. The Prime Minister is in hot water over an unethical surveillance system called T.H.E.A., the exact computer program that captures Mason’s image and launches a shoot-to-kill operation against him. Manafort wants Mason dead for so-called treacherous desertion, keen-eyed Roberta wants answers, but as much as Ackie, Nighy and Walters can imbue their characters with cool charisma, the hackneyed dialogue fails to meet them at their level.

There lies my main grievance with Shelter. Ward Parry’s screenplay might offer a serviceable story in the shadowy spy-thriller genre, but it lacks finesse or depth, instead serving up clichés at every corner. Lines like “Mason isn’t just an assassin, he’s a precision instrument,” and “you don’t want this life” function as stock dialogue in a script divorced from subtext. Everything is just too on-the-nose, especially when it comes to Mason.

There are moments where Statham reminds us he is more than just an action star, but also a penetrating, emphatic actor. Behind his eyes, he conveys the anger, the menace and growing affection he has for his young ward as they fight their way from Scotland to London. He and an enterprising Breathnach, who was recently seen in Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet, share a believable chemistry. Her sparky gumption against his rugged fatalism hints at Léon’s Natalie Portman and Jean Reno.

But Léon this ain’t, as the movie struggles to bolster Jessie’s motivations as to why she’d want to hitch her wagon to Mason’s murderous star. And instead of trusting in Statham’s silent ability to communicate that internal struggle, of a man let down by his country and brought back to life by a traumatised girl, both are given banal sentences to utter that flatten the emotional core.

Where Shelter does succeed is in the creatively brutal fight sequences laced through Mason and Jessie’s journey. Angel Has Fallen director Ric Roman Waugh offers bruising stakes, beginning with an island invasion evoking the ingenious spirit of Home Alone – think boulders and flame throwers – and ending with a claustrophobic nightclub bust-up.

In between, Statham faces off against Manafort’s asset Workman (Bryan Vigier), a no-nonsense assassin who, one character quips, is “Mason 20 years ago.” Their hand-to-hand combat is punishing, packed with so much brute force and rigor you might worry our hero won’t make it out alive. These sequences do rely a little too much on tightly framed close-ups and repetitive moves, but props to the sound department as well as David Buckley’s thumping score, both of which maintain that intensity with every kick, punch, stab and shot amplified to formidable levels.

Shelter is certainly a safe action vehicle for Statham, but it could have benefited from more narrative risks.