Jason Statham Is But One other Rogue Sleeper Agent in Lavatory-Normal Bourne Riff

Hear, if a method works, it really works. The quantity of occasions that Jason Statham has performed a former elite talent Black Ops-like agent of the state whose relative peace and quiet is interrupted by one thing dramatic and surprising is, effectively, lots. The Beekeeper, The Wrath of Man, The Mechanic, Hummingbird, Parker and now Shelter all have the charmingly inert British motion star enjoying variations of the identical theme. He left behind a world that conflicted together with his strict code of ethics, with the hope of by no means having to kill once more. Sorry, Jason, I suppose it is not that straightforward to keep away from the lifetime of an murderer.

Shelter is kind of precisely what it needs to be: a solidly choreographed motion thriller with kinetically-charged combat scenes. Statham performs to his strengths as a soft-hearted, steely-skinned renegade. Ric Roman Waugh’s second movie of 2026 (Greenland 2: Migration) does nothing particular to reinvent the wheel, which is simply as effectively, because it’s endlessly pleasing to see the no-nonsense Brit mow down dangerous dudes whereas clad in a complete outfit plucked from a Banana Republic catalog. The movie has a few Statham’s tautest hand-to-hand combats of his profession.

Shelter is Fully Non-Distinctive, However Maybe That is Simply As Effectively

In Shelter, Statham performs Michael Mason, a reputation in the identical purposefully unremarkable vein of James Bond. However Mason has none of that attraction. He is a heavy-bearded recluse decided to not have any human interplay. However, don’t fret, he isn’t a sociopath: he has a black husky that he appears to love fairly a bit. Mason lives on a solitary Scottish isle of the Outer Hebrides, spending most of his days brooding on the tempestuous waters, ingesting a ton of vodka and enjoying chess by himself. He appears to by no means take his garments off, even to fall asleep.

Mason will get his sustenance from a once-a-week supply by boat from a good friend’s daughter, Jesse (Bodhi Rae Breathnach), who travels to his shore on a tiny boat. However, in the future, it capsizes in a storm, and Mason is pressured to dive into the water (Banana Republic turtleneck nonetheless on) and save Jesse. Within the scrum, Jesse’s ankle is badly broken, and although the tight-lipped Mason is aware of how harmful it’s for him to enter the close by city, he has no selection if he’ll assist his new companion.

In fact, nearly as quickly as he is touched down at a pharmacy does he entice the eye of MI6. It seems that Mason was once part of a band of elite brokers of the state, a fictional group known as the Black Kites began by the now-former MI6 chief, Manafort (Invoice Nighy). Supposed as a subsection outdoors conventional covert operations, the corporate is so secretive that solely he and the Prime Minister are conscious of its existence (the sadly underused Harriet Walter, of Succession fame).

Why Mason is on the outs with each MI6 and the Black Kites stays underneath wraps for a lot of the movie, however suffice it to say that when the solutions come, they’re nearly charming of their non-distinctiveness. In reality, the entire movie is totally inseparable from every little thing else within the Statham sub-genre, but additionally from so many different motion movies. In premise, it borrows from The Bourne Identification collection. In its relationship between Mason and Jesse, it takes from Leon the Skilled. Within the legend of Mason’s character, it apes from John Wick.

That is to not say it is not a enjoyable time to see Statham simply knock down weaker opponents in his quest to convey Jesse to security, however it does imply that the movie is forgettable as a matter after all. The Wick films work so effectively exactly as a result of they’re so purely balletic, however Ward Parry’s script satirically makes the error of making an attempt to make us care about Mason’s relationship to a toddler he has simply met; it by no means actually is smart why Mason goes thus far out of his approach to assist her.

Extra intriguing is the suggestion of the movie’s politics vis a vis state surveillance. When the movie begins, we be taught that Manafort is underneath hearth for serving to to construct a system that’s illegally ripping away common civilian’s personal knowledge with a purpose to discover and quash terror threats with extra alacrity. It appears, at first, that Parry and Waugh could also be making an attempt to make a bigger level about how using synthetic intelligence in surveillance is mechanically defective, since it’s inevitable it’ll put harmless individuals in hurt’s approach, however that promise is discarded fairly shortly.

A lot of Shelter is muddy on this regard. Everybody’s motivations are suspect, from Manafort’s looking of his former prodigy, to Mason’s obsessive safety of Jesse, to Jesse’s bonding with Mason. That does not even contact Roberta Frost (Naomi Ackie), Manafort’s MI6 successor. Ackie is a fantastic actor, however she has nothing to do on this movie besides react incredulously to laptop photos.

Waugh is aware of methods to construct an motion sequence with the most effective of them, and Shelter is, finally, an electrical actioner, as long as it’s sticking to the motion. Statham is simply so snug in these roles now that it matches him in addition to a fitted black cardigan. It actually is difficult to overstate simply how stable he’s, a lot in order that he simply papers Parry’s bog-standard script. However, perhaps subsequent time, Statham’s character can have extra to do than take revenge on a bunch of unsuspecting idiots.

Shelter releases theatrically on January thirtieth, 2026.