(2.5 stars)
Let’s play a game.
I’m going to name several movie titles. You tell me whether they are campy action movies starring Jason Statham or something I completely made up.
Your options: “A Working Man,” “The Beekeeper,” “World of Tanks: Holiday Ops,” “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre,” “Wrath of Man,” “The Meg,” “Mechanic: Resurrection,” “Wildcard,” “Redemption,” “Parker,” “Safe,” “Killer Elite,” “Blitz,” “Death Race,” “Crank” and, simply, “War.”
As you’ve probably already guessed, this is a trick question. Every one of these is the title of a film starring Statham, the reigning king of Hollywood’s annual unloading season known as Dumpuary.
The man is the fast-food burger of genre movies. They may not always be great, but they’ll be served consistently and without fanfare. You’ll leave sated and, every once in a while, actually impressed.
This month’s Statham movie is titled “Shelter.” And as these things go, “Shelter” is more Shake Shack than it is McDonald’s. It resembles his other genre movies in the basic form and idea, but it’s a much more high-end and satisfying version.
Because, much as a burger can be modified in only so many ways, the same is true of these movies.
Sometimes, they simply mix up the ingredients. Just as a burger joint might swap lettuce and tomato for mushroom and onions, Statham’s movies tend to swap out his character’s stated profession. He’s a beekeeper in “The Beekeeper.” He’s a construction worker in “A Working Man.” This rarely matters, as he’s usually secretly (or, sometimes, not secretly) the world’s top assassin, or supersoldier, or rescue diver, or some such. To quote Liam Neeson, a fellow king of Dumpuary, he always has a “very particular set of skills.”
What really differentiates these movies from one another, like a good sandwich, is the quality of the ingredients. You know pretty much what you’re getting, but how sturdy will it be?
“Shelter” is sturdy.
This go-round, Statham is a loner living in a broken lighthouse with a nameless dog on the Scottish isles. He drinks vodka and plays chess against himself. Every so often, a man and his niece (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) bring him supplies (read: more vodka) by boat, and he either ignores them or says misanthropic things like, “There’s nothing here for anyone.”
Then, a storm comes, capsizing the boat and catalyzing Statham to action. He manages to save the unconscious young girl, but the uncle drowns. When she wakes, she believes she’s being held prisoner.
This sequence lasts as a seaside chamber piece for a tense half-hour, which is astonishingly long for these sorts of movies. It might bifurcate the audience. Most Statham genre movies suffer from too much nonstop action. This one doesn’t even seem like an action movie for nearly 30 minutes.
But then, of course, Statham eventually has to go to the mainland, where we learn MI6 has created a surveillance state across Britain and also been hacked, and there are hearings, and the prime minister isn’t happy, or something. There’s talk of AI, and there’s Bill Nighy wearing a suit and thick-framed black glasses, covertly running a group of — or maybe just one — superhuman assassins via texting.
None of this really matters. It’s merely the lighter fluid to get the charcoal going. We quickly learn Statham was one of those assassins and, behold!, he’s now fighting his way around Britain, the little girl he’s begrudgingly learning to love in tow and the newest star super-assassin on his tail. This continues for the rest of the movie.
While it becomes less interesting than the first half-hour, it’s solidly made. Some might find it shockingly derivative of the Jason Bourne franchise, from the way the camera shakes and spins and grounds the violence like the one in Paul Greengrass’s movies to the way Statham’s character fights using household objects such as a fork or a screwdriver, recalling Matt Damon’s famous innovation of magazine as weapon.
There’s a little John Wick in there for good measure, from the (spoiler alert) shooting of a dog to an action sequence set in a pulsing club.
But I see it more as homage. Director Ric Roman Waugh’s not new to beefing up genre fare a little, as he did with “Angel Has Fallen” and the Greenland series. “Shelter,” however familiar at times, might be his best meal yet.
Sure, it’s still a burger. But one made with care.
And sometimes, you just want a burger.
R. At area theaters. Contains violence and mature language. 107 minutes.
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