SHELTER Review: Jason Statham Takes on Corrupt MI6 Spies

Few stars carry Jason Statham's gravity. For 30 years, through movies good and bad, he's delivered the exact same physicality, the exact same performance. He's one of the last action heroes standing.

In recent years Statham has dabbled in comedies and in snarky, winking meta-films that cast his genre into doubt. A Working Man was comic book nonsense filtered through Sylvster Stallone's macho fallacies. The Beekeeper tried to build a jokey universe in which violence didn't matter and one-liners ruled. Compared to his formative vehicles like the Transformer franchise, true fans despaired of seeing him doing what he did best: sullenly knocking bad guys senseless.

Shelter's not the answer, although it will do for now. Essentially it retrieves his hero from Safe, a startlingly good B-movie from 2012 that helped put David Leitch, Chad Stahelski, and 87North on the map. In that film Statham had to rescue a young girl from an overwhelming number of bad guys simply because it was the right thing to do.

Here he's Mason, a super soldier in exile on an Outer Hebrides island. He's visited every now and then by Jessie (Bodhi Rae Breathnac), a young girl who rows supplies ashore while her "uncle" watches from a nearby fishing boat. He rebuffs her attempts to befriend him, but when she's injured in a storm he does the right thing and cares for her.

When he boats to Stornoway for medical supplies, he triggers THEA Analytics, an MI6 surveillance operation that can tap into every camera in the British Isles. Formerly run by Stephen Manafort (Bill Nighy), who's been forcibly removed, it's now under Roberta Frost (Naomi Ackie). Following protocol, she orders a SWAT team to apprehend Mason.

But Mason has booby-trapped the island, and during the nighttime raid easily dispatches six attackers. Realizing that Jessie is now in danger, he calls old friend Arthur Booth (Daniel Mays) for help.

The target of cops and soldiers, Mason is also pursued by "Black Kite" assassin James Workman (Bryan Vigier), who has orders to kill on sight.

The only way to save Jessie is to stop Manafort, the architect of the Black Kite program. That involves hiring a dealer to ship Jessie offshore, leading to a dozen deaths in a nightclub shootout.

The espionage intrigue in Shelter winds up meaning next-to-nothing, other than to give Statham's character a target for revenge. The movie boils down to chases and fights, a few exceptionlly well staged. Cars become battering rams in one superb sequence. An extended fight between Mason and Workman unfolds in a barn filled with instruments of death.

Shelter is locked into an unforgiving genre, one where certain things have to happen, and where it's impossible to escape the influence of John Wick. Director Ric Roman Waugh does a solid job focusing on the film's action elements and glossing over its exposition as quickly as possible. Stunt coordinator Steve Griffin's contributions are way better than expected.

In fact, Shelter on the whole is above average as well. Statham may never again match the heights he reached with Cory Yuen, but he still sets a high bar.

The film opens Friday, January 30, only in movie theaters, via Black Bear Pictures. Visit the film's  official site for locations and showtimes.