Quick Synopsis: On a remote coastal island, a former assassin living in self-imposed exile rescues a young girl from a deadly storm. As their lives start to intertwine, he must protect the orphan while battling enemies from his past.
Thoughts Going In: Jason Statham is going to punch people. I have to be honest, the first time I saw this trailer, I thought it was a sequel to The Beekeeper, that’s how interchangeable his performances are.
Years ago, I was reading about a script for a Robin Hood movie that was focused on the sheriff of Nottingham. Essentially, he was going to be a CSI-style forensic investigator. That movie was made into the 2010 Robin Hood movie that was just another generic retelling. I can’t imagine a bigger gap between potential and reality than that. Shelter is a close second, though. No, the script was never going to be the best in the world, and you won’t be able to improve on some of the stupidity, but it nearly had a much better director. The original director was Baltasar Kormákur, who has previously directed 2022’s Beast, 2018’s Adrift, and 2015’s Everest. I’m not saying those films are masterpieces, but Kormákur is an award-winning director, so at the very least, he can be depended upon to be visually interesting. Shelter needs that. The action scenes are lacking any sense of excitement. Even the non-action scenes make use of an annoying handheld camera that makes it nauseating to watch. Most baffling is the use of music: there are some action scenes with no music at all. When I first noticed it, I wondered whether that was the film’s gimmick, an action movie with no non-diegetic audio. That would at least be interesting and unique. But then the action scene ended, and the characters got out of the car and started talking normally, and that was deemed music-worthy. What made the non-audio scene so notable was that it was a car chase across mostly rural roads. Have you heard a car chase without music? It’s just a long droning whine (a bit like a speech from [insert politician you don’t like here, even one who is famous for being an entertaining speaker]). It genuinely made me think it was a mistake; that they just forgot to put music on.
There are also issues with the script, mostly logistical. I’m not speaking about “A person high up in British intelligence wouldn’t kill an innocent person just for convenience”, because that would DEFINITELY happen. I mean, “they drove from Scotland to London without being caught on a single camera?” Or when a teenage girl is dragged kicking and screaming into a black van, and nobody seems to notice/care/film it for social media. Top tip: go over to the O2 Dome in London, when all the clubs are still open, and the streets are occupied but not bustling. Then fire a gun multiple times, see if anybody notices, because they don’t in this. For a group of highly trained secret agents, they are shit at being secret. I mean, the main villain shot someone in the head whilst they were surrounded by police. Did that get mentioned again? Nope. In fact, none of the police members who are attacked there are referenced ever again. You’d think there’d be something, some kind of news report at the very least. Is the general public aware of what’s happening? No idea, the film isn’t interested in telling us. It doesn’t even stick around at the end to tell us the repercussions of a former head of MI6 being killed in his own house. I suppose expecting closure for that is a bit much, considering the film states the Prime Minister is in political trouble due to illegal surveillance of civilians, and then is never seen again, and nothing happens to that system. The controversy is never mentioned again. It’s as if the script set up a lot of narrative dominoes, then got bored and wandered off before using them.
I’m not asking for this to be groundbreaking. I’m not asking for it to be an intelligent study on human nature. But I am asking it put effort in. For someone to look at the script and take out stuff it doesn’t need. For someone to think of the logic of some scenes. For someone to make it so that the action scenes are actually entertaining. Shelter had zero chance of being my favourite movie of the year, but there’s no excuse for it to be as lazy as it is. Bodhi Rae Breathnach is pretty damn good, though.
Again, it’s not that it’s a bad film. It’s that even as a first-time viewer, you’ve already seen it. You can guess the dialogue before it happens. There are 1000 movies just like this, so what’s the point of this one?
Troubled Productions 