Jason Statham braves the cold in Shelter, his first movie of 2026. And here’s our review of the new action thriller… Welcome to the continuing adventures of The Statham on the big screen. This time, our Jase is on a remote island in the Outer Hebrides. He sports a beard, and couples his warm hooded ... Shelter review | The Statham kicks off 2026 in the cold
Jason Statham braves the cold in Shelter, his first movie of 2026. And here’s our review of the new action thriller…
Welcome to the continuing adventures of The Statham on the big screen. This time, our Jase is on a remote island in the Outer Hebrides. He sports a beard, and couples his warm hooded coat with a woolly hat. His only contact with the outside world? An uncle and niece, whose small boat drops off supplies, risky choppy waters to deliver The Stath a beverage or two, porridge, and by the looks of it, the kind of magazine that might be quite useful when you’re alone.
He walks his dog in a passive aggressive manner. He plays chess by himself. He looks stern. He sleeps. It’s all got modern art installation written all over it.
But! Uncle Star Trek Red Shirt and his niece find themselves suddenly in choppy waters delivering Jason’s usual, and it’s only the nearby presence of a former Commonwealth Games diving competitor that drags the latter out of the water. Now, The Statham doesn’t just have a dog and some warm clothes on his remote island. He finds himself nursing a teenage girl back to health.
Shelter has begun.
By this stage, any seasoned moviegoer will have what’s known as The Mummy Returns klaxon going off in their head. It’s 25 years since that particular film introduced a nauseating kid sidekick character, and Statham – an action star who resisted the Kindergarten Cop, The Pacifier and Tooth Fairy style of film – now finds himself alongside one. Thankfully, Bodhi Rae Breathnach as Jessie is a very good choice. Bullet dodged.
Jessie’s had the kind of life, it turns out, that sounds like the set up for a Disney animated musical. Her mum died, she never knew her dad, and now her Uncle Red Shirt is at the bottom of the ocean. Then she befriends a stranger with a past and, ah, you can probably imagine the opening song yourself.
All this early stuff is really good. There’s one moment where Jessie wakes up holding a knife, to be met by Jason Statham staring at her, and then carrying her to the toilet. In truth, I’ve had the same dream. Then, stern Stath draws a pencil sketch of a dog, his character half-heartedly deepened by a collection of further drawings around him.
Still, this whole set up is fine stuff. Director Ric Roman Waugh leaves us in little doubt as to how isolated the pair are, and if the score sometimes goes full-on action movie pace even when the emptiness of things is being conveyed, it zips by.
Then, abruptly, the movie shifts to London, and the plot kicks in. Naturally enough, the trigger for this is The Stath popping into a charity shop, which causes an alert at MI6. It’s a bit of a tonal shift, as suddenly we’re in sterile rooms with TFT screens blurting out serious looking graphics and – let’s face it, it’s not a surprise – we learn that there’s more to The Statham that we’d originally been presented with.
We saw The Beekeeper. We know how this shit works.
It all goes a bit Jason Bourne from here, with Naomi Ackie the person in charge of staring at screens and making decisions in a control room. Then there are discreet mobile phones that send encrypted messages but do so while making a noise whenever a piece of text appears on their screen. Oh, and there’s Bill Nighy, the old spymaster with his secrets, jabbing at his computer keyboard with the vim of a man playing Daley Thompson’s Decathlon on the ZX Spectrum.
Shelter, then, soon abandons its remote island setup, in much the same way that the film Plane had Gerard Butler land the thing and everyone get off. But also, it then segues into a game of here are bad people, and they must be avoided. Occasionally, with Stath and Jessie arriving at an interior location large enough for an action scene to take place and for some shit to get smashed up. Daniel Mays gets the film’s most thankless role – well, short of Uncle Red Shirt – given dialogue that’s exposition with some extra words thrown in.
In truth, the mix of ingredients that screenwriter Ward Parry assembles isn’t particularly fresh. I’ve a sneaking suspicion too that – just as Gerard Butler proved with The Vanishing – a tighter film might have ensured had everyone staying on the island. It’s certainly what I felt I was sold, but not necessarily what I got.
What I got, though, sits somewhere between two of Statham’s more recent releases: The Beekeeper and A Working Man. I’m a big fan of the former, but found the latter went all dour and serious. Shelter – steered well by Ric Roman Waugh, who paces his film skilfully – has a fair whack to commend it. Visually clearly built for a cinema screen, and with a core dynamic to it that works, it gets bogged down the more it cuts back to London offices.
It’s a solid start for The Statham for 2026, even if there’s a gnawing suspicion there’s a better film in Shelter than the one we got. But I’m happy enough here. And let’s face it, there’s little like sitting in freezing cold January watching an escapist film with people on a freezing cold island. Take your thermals…
