Shelter Review

Shelter is a British-set spy action-thriller that sees Jason Statham having to use his skills to protect a young girl accidentally caught up in his world.

Michael Mason (Jason Statham) is a former SBS soldier and MI6 agent who lives in isolation on a remote island in the Outer Hebrides. His supplies are delivered by a former colleague and his niece, Jessie (Bodhi Rae Breathnach). During a storm, Jessie gets injured, and Mason nurses the young girl. When Mason goes to the mainland, he ends up getting exposed, leading MI6 to send a Special Forces team to eliminate him.

Jason Statham is no stranger to the action genre. He has led series like The Transporter and Crank and had major roles in The Expendables and Fast and Furious franchises. However, he has recently found himself in a niche of mid-budget action films. The Beekeeper and A Working Man were profitable films and shows he’s still a box office draw. Shelter fitted into that model.

Statham has seemingly gone down the same path as Liam Neeson: making slightly different variations of the same action film. Shelter shared numerous tropes with his previous two films: Statham was an ex-government operative who was in hiding but forced into action when someone he cared about was put in danger. Shelter wasn’t even the first film Statham made where he had to protect a child, since he led the underrated action film Safe.

There was a lot of The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy in Shelter since all these films were about badass spies who get hunted down by their former agencies. Shelter even copied some scenes and story ideas from the Bourne series. There was a lot of activity in the MI6 control room as agents and analysts were trying to track Mason’s movements. Naomi Ackie was in a similar role to Joan Allen in The Bourne Supremacy, where they were both leading a hunt for someone who they thought was a bad guy, but was actually undercovering a conspiracy. Shelter had a bad guy who sent a skilled operative to hunt down Mason so he could cover his tracks, like Chris Cooper sending Clive Owen to kill Jason Bourne. Shelter even had a scene set on a farm involving a sniper rifle, like The Bourne Identity.

Shelter aimed to be a more serious-minded film. Mason was a loner who pushed people away, and Jessie was trying to break down his emotional walls. I’m currently playing The Last of Us Part 1, so I couldn’t help but notice Shetler having some parallels. Both were about jaded older veterans being forced to protect teenage girls. Mason even asked Jessie if she ever used a gun before, like Josh asking Ellie to cover him. There was a comical image of a small girl holding a large rifle. Breathnach gave the film a heart, and she’s clearly an actress on the rise because she was in Hamnet, and set to appear in an adaptation of Sense and Sensibility and Robert Eggers’ Werwulf.

The seriousness extended to the wider plot. MI6 had developed a mass surveillance program, leading to questions regarding civil liberties and state overreach. The villain, Manafort (Bill Nighy), was introduced being questioned by a public inquiry, and he was cold and ruthless when ordering deaths. It added to the Bourne-esque nature of the film. However, all of this did make Shelter a po-faced film.

As an action, Shelter was fine, but its serious nature meant it wasn’t as action-packed as some of Statham’s other films. The most inventive action scene was in a workshop because Mason and a rival agent grabbed any tool they could and used them as weapons. It was the kind of action-madness fans want. This film avoids the mistake The Beekeeper made where Statham just dominated opponents. He was evenly matched, and he did suffer from strikes and injuries.

Shelter was Statham’s best film in recent years, but a mid-ranking film in his overall filmography. It was a competently made film, but it relied too much on tropes and will not stick in the memory.