There is a strangely elegiac calm to the opening stretch of Ric Roman Waugh’s latest Jason Statham vehicle, Shelter – one that might catch viewers expecting immediate punches, car chases, and broken necks slightly off guard. For a while, this isn’t really a movie about violence so much as solitude: wind-battered cliffs, a creaking wooden cabin, and a man who looks like he has spent years trying to disappear from his own life. That deliberate quiet gives the film an unexpected moodiness, and even if it occasionally tests the patience of action-hungry audiences, it signals that Waugh is aiming for something marginally more reflective than the standard “Statham takes names” template. The result is an uneven but often engaging thriller that wants to be a character study and a brutal action film at the same time – and only partially succeeds at being both.
At its core, the story follows Michael Mason (Statham), a former member of the shadowy Black Kites – an elite government assassination unit – who has gone rogue and exiled himself to a remote island off the Scottish coast with little more than his dog for company. His only human contact is Jessie (Bodhi Rae Breathnach), a grieving young girl who delivers his weekly supplies and bristles at his coldness. When a storm claims her uncle and leaves her injured, Mason is forced out of his self-imposed isolation to protect her, inadvertently exposing himself to MI6 surveillance. That single moment of visibility triggers a lethal response from his former handler, Manafort (Bill Nighy, enjoying his quiet villainy), who sends mercenaries and soldiers after him, dragging Mason – and the reluctant, resourceful Jessie – into a cross-country flight that moves from farms and safe houses to London nightclubs and finally to a climactic reckoning.
The film takes its time before fully embracing the mayhem, and that slow burn is both a strength and a frustration. Waugh seems genuinely interested in the emotional dynamic between Mason and Jessie: two people shaped by loss who find an uneasy, almost father-daughter connection in the chaos. Their scenes together – particularly when Mason teaches her how to handle a gun – are surprisingly tender, lending the film a layer of warmth that most Statham pictures rarely bother with. Yet that same restraint means the action arrives in fits and starts, and viewers conditioned to the kinetic immediacy of something like The Beekeeper or The Transporter may find themselves waiting longer than expected for the fireworks.
When the action does kick in, however, Shelter delivers exactly what you came for. Hand-to-hand combat and tactical takedowns are staged with professional efficiency by Waugh (Angel Has Fallen, Greenland), even if none of it feels especially novel. The antagonist, Workman (Bryan Vigier), functions as a suitably relentless foil, culminating in a grueling final confrontation that is satisfyingly brutal in that very Statham manner. There’s a sense throughout that the film knows it’s recycling familiar beats – the betrayed operative, the corrupt handler, the morally ambiguous government – but it embraces them with a certain muscular confidence rather than trying to pretend it’s reinventing the wheel.
Ultimately, the movie’s ambition is what keeps it from feeling entirely disposable, even if it never quite transcends its formula. It gestures toward themes of redemption, guilt, and surrogate family, and it gives Statham space to play something a touch more introspective than his usual indestructible killing machine. Yet by the end, it can’t resist the gravitational pull of genre comfort: Mason is still the near-mythic assassin who outthinks, outmaneuvers, and out-fights everyone in his path. It’s a film that reaches for depth, flirts with poignancy, and then happily settles back into the pleasures of familiar, hard-hitting spectacle – leaving us with a solid, watchable, if hardly groundbreaking, entry in the Statham canon.
THREE STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Shelter is now screening in Australian theatres.
