Jason Statham has become a brand. The British actor has become so associated with tough-guy action that some fans refer to his movies without mentioning titles. A Statham picture is good enough, as someone at a preview screening described the phenomenon.
Shelter, Statham's latest, finds him playing a bearded loner who lives in an abandoned lighthouse on a tiny rock pile of an island in the Scottish Hebrides. Statham's Michael Mason drinks vodka, wanders about with his dog, and plays chess games with himself.
If you know Statham movies, you can bet he'll soon be on the move.
A series of early contrivances put Statham's Mason on the run with 13-year-old Jesse (Bodhi Rae Breathnach). Circumstances make him the girl's lone protector.
A former Special Forces assassin, Mason was part of a super-secret group called Black Kite. When Mason refused to assassinate a good guy, he went into hiding. An agency ally with computer skills (Daniel Mays) hacked the system and faked Mason's death. But the moment Mason leaves the island, his foes will know he's still alive. He'll become a target, and one with "baggage," as he puts it.
The baggage, of course, is Jesse, who found herself on the island when her uncle's boat stopped to deliver supplies. She nearly drowned trying to leave, but Mason saved her. The uncle didn't survive a vicious storm that sank his boat.
The supporting cast includes Bill Nighy as Manafort, Mason's former boss and the man who most wants him eliminated. Naomi Ackie, who plays an uncorrupted MI6 officer. Harriet Walter takes a turn as the British Prime Minister, a character as crooked as Nighy's Manafort.
Waugh (Angel Has Fallen, Greenland, and Greenland 2: Migration) loads the screen with fights, gunplay, and assorted examples of genre violence that build up the movie's prodigious body count.
I guess you could say that Statham and Breathnach give the movie some heart, but relentless action rules with Mason adhering to the school of heroism that says little, fires many bullets, and proves inventive with anything that's available to be used as a weapon. When an industrial-strength chain fells one of Mason's foes, much of the audience applauded.
Nothing much else to add here, other than to reinforce the notion that Shelter demonstrates its competence at delivering what's expected of it -- if not much more.
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