Shelter

A recluse's isolated island lighthouse life is upended after he saves a young girl from drowning, an action that causes dark secrets from his past to resurface, placing them both in danger.

Jason Statham, the littlest English ninja, is back once again with his latest action movie extravaganza, Shelter, yet another film where he is kicking ass left and right, but this time... he has a beard.

A smaller action film with a budget of only $50 million, Shelter managed to gross around $12.8 million domestically, and $41.1 million internationally, for a total of $53.9 million. Seeing how this film is kind of small, not just in budget, scope, and general plot noise, but also in its marketing and the size of the splash that it made in the pop culture zeitgeist, I think it's fair to say that this number, around fifty or so million, is an accurate reflection of Jason Statham's actual box office power.

I don't think this is a bad thing, and script and/or cast depending, I think he's capable of pulling in more, but I also think this number shows that, in general, he's a middling, generic, but still pretty reliable action star, as well as one that can turn a profit, at least with the right sized budget. Plus, looking out across the action film landscape, I think he may be the only action star who is truly capable of this at the moment, at least in the domestic market. Additionally, I wonder if, when coupled with the recent rise in popularity for horror films at the box office, if this means that the market is changing, and that, at least for now, the future of action movies will have to adjust to be more like this one… straight-to-streaming smaller budget films, all with much more basic premises and set-pieces. Maybe the era of the big action film is over, at lest for now. This probably isn't a prospect Jason Statham is all that enthused about, and neither am I, to be honest, but a thing is not beautiful because it lasts...

So I guess we shall see.

Anyway…

Shelter begins with a guy named Micheal Mason living my dream of being a grizzled old lighthouse operator on a lonely windswept island in the Scottish Outer Hebrides. Although to be fair, if he were truly living my dream, then the island would be shaped like a giant skull, and the lighthouse would be set at its peak, and painted in bright birthday colors, as if the skull were wearing a lighthouse birthday hat, because it was their birthday, but I guess you can't win them all…

Micheal is clearly a man in a self-imposed exile. Just one look at the guy in his stocking cap and salt-and-pepper "old man of the sea" beard, and the way that he stares silently out at the water, all grim and sad and stoic, it's clear that he is doing some kind of penance by being there, that he is haunted by the myriad sins of his own past. This is especially obvious, because the lighthouse doesn't even work, so it’s not like he’s actually doing anything out there, other than being performatively sad and alone, which is weird, because who are you performing for? He's in hiding. Also, he plays chess against himself, a detail that is supposed to demonstrate that he’s the smartest and most tactically-minded guy in the room, but in actuality, just doesn’t make any sense. How can you possibly play chess against yourself, that's something I have never understood. On top of that, he's the only guy in the room, so who cares, big deal. you won. Here's first prize for being the smartest guy on the island, population: you.

Still, his dog likes him, so he’s probably not all that bad of a guy. Unfortunately, a bad later shoots the dog, so that’s a bunch of bullshit.

But whatever, the fact remains, Micheal clearly believes he’s a bad person, that he deserves to be punished, and not in the fun way either. So, he's alone out there on that windswept rock, because he thinks he’s a bad guy, and that he doesn't deserve conversation or companionship, or anything nice, not even birthday presents from considerate little girls who drop off food and supplies for him every week on her uncle's boat, not even when they're nicely wrapped in pretty paper.

And honestly, maybe he’s right. After all, the mother fucker does put his dirty-ass boots on the couch, like a god damn barbarian.

But whatever...

Point is, Michael is hiding from something, something in his dark past. And from the way Michael stands quietly, doing nothing all day but staring out the window at the sea, all bad-ass-like, plus the fact that this is an action movie, you can rest assured that whatever that something is, it probably involved him killing a bunch of people for Queen and Country.

In the meantime...

As I said, every week, Michael gets a box of supplies from Jessie, a young girl, who brings the supplies with her uncle, who Michael served with in the Royal Marines, on her uncle’s boat. But then a bad storm capsizes the ship, killing her uncle and injuring Jessie, and Mason has to rescue her. The pair bond as she recovers on the island, because there's nothing that a stoic bad ass warrior likes more than a chirpy little girl to protect. Unfortunately, Michael's need to protect Jessie proves to be his undoing, as the girl needs some amoxicillin, meaning that he has to go to the mainland. While there, Mason is caught on some Zoomer’s livestream, skulking around town and picking up supplies.

This is bad news because of THEA.

THEA stands for Total Human Engagement Analytics, and it's a top secret surveillance program, run by the British government, that illegal monitors British citizens. Roberta Frost, the Deputy Chief of MI6, is in charge of THEA. She is next in line to be Chief of MI6, because the current Chief, Stephen Manafort, is stepping down, but only so he can restart an old black ops program known as Black Kite, which is a group of ultra top secret super bad ass government killers. And it turns out, in a surprise coincidence, that back in the day, Michael actually used to be the most super bad ass Black Kite of them all... but he developed a conscience, and disobeyed orders, refusing to kill an innocent man, so he had to go AWOL.

This is why he's in hiding.

Due to some poorly thought-out deep cover track-covering by some of his old hacker friends, THEA misidentifies Michael as a terrorist with a kill order. Why his hacker friend didn't choose a random garbage man to replace Michael’s identity with in computer database, just literally anyone who wasn't an actual terrorist with a kill order on their head, I don't know. Anyway, this prompts Roberta Frost to send a tactical team to the lighthouse island to take Michael out. Unfortunately for all of them, it turns out that Michael hasn’t just spent his time on the island doing nothing, playing chess against himself, and staring stoically out at the sea, he's also set up a bunch of incredibly dangerous Rube Goldberg-esque booby traps.

With the tactical team now very, very dead, and his island hideout now burned, Michael and Jessie escape to mainland Scotland. Unfortunately, they are soon set upon by James Workman, a "Black Kite" who is what Michael Mason was twenty years ago. Manafort sent him to tie up loose ends. This leads to a bunch of running and fast driving and shooting and spinning around and then shooting some more, and then ducking and popping up like "surprise!" and kicking, and then even more shooting, as well as some more punching, until finally, at long last, everyone is dead except for our heroes.

The End.

Shelter is your basic Bourne Identity “oops, we’ve upset the wrong super assassin” type of thing, where some nancy-boy suits in their fancy offices decide to wipe out a guy who is honestly better left alone, forcing this guy to snap into a slim jim and murder literally dozens of people across the British countryside, all while “the sins of the past come back to haunt our hero… literally," in the form of a much younger, and much more attractive, version of who our hero once was. And this is all while the film is also busy being a semi-accurate portrayal of the horrors of living in our own current surveillance state nightmare world.

I did appreciate how, during one of the many moments of Statham-ing in this film, the last cop standing, after seeing all of his buddies get the unholy crap kicked out of them, decided to bow out, like “y’know what? Actually, I’m cool. I don’t get paid enough to be beaten up by a tiny little fisherman-ninja, how's about we both just go our separate ways? Here's my car keys.”

The main problem with Shelter is not that it's bad per se, it’s that it's boring, and worse, you’ve definitely seen every part of it before, and done better too. Not that rehashing common set-ups is inherently a bad thing, it just that, doing so operates under the same rule as leftovers... you've got to have a little razz-ma-tazz on hand to zhuzh it up, or it's just not that interesting, and if there's one thing this film is short on, it's razz-ma-tazz.

Bottom line?

I demand better Stathaming from my Statham. I think I deserve it. I think we all deserve it. And this? This is too dull and too slow. It's a film that feels like everyone is doing it out of obligation, and what makes that so weird is that, if true, it's such a small potatoes obligation. Just say no next time, Mr. Statham.

If you're looking for a good modern version of the classic One Man Army action movie, I prefer the ridiculous craziness of something like The Beekeeper to po-faced barely reheated shit like this. Also, I’m getting a little tired of “surprise, jerks, this quiet little normal guy is actually the baddest bad ass of them all” storyline. At this point, if you’re going to make that movie, and it’s not starring Paul Walter Hauser (as long as it doesn't conflict with him being the next Terminator... fingers crossed), then you’re just wasting my time.

Pass.