Even though it’s easily one of the worst in the Jason Statham canon, I feel duty bound to review this because a) it’s set in a remote Scottish location, the Outer Hebrides, famed for the likes of Whisky Galore (1949) and its sequel and b) because I’ve been a paid-up member (possibly one of the few) of The Stath Fan Club. So I was half-expecting to see the imprimatur of Creative Scotland on the credits, but when I checked it out, realized I’d been sold a dummy and that for “tax reasons” it had been filmed in Ireland with an occasional sign slotted in to suggest it was set in Stornoway.
But I’m afraid our Jason has fallen victim to the Dwayne Johnson affliction, whereby the successful action hero believes he has to show he can “act.” In this case, Jason is saddled with a young girl which means, by virtue of Sergei Eisenstein’s dictat, every time he glowers the hostility is softened because the camera cuts to the girl.
The reasons this falls down is not so much that very little makes sense in the first place (even though that’s a very low bar anyway) but that the director loses faith in the original idea and having set up the notion of former Government gun for hire recluse Mason (Jason Statham) battling through the wilderness of the land and seas around the Sottish Western Isles to safeguard his unwelcome charge, the orphan Jesse (Bodhi Rae Breathnach), that’s suddenly abandoned and we are relocated to London for a shoot-out in a nightclub.
The screenplay draws extensively on the Bourne films. Mason has been hiding out in a lighthouse on a remote island, quietly drinking himself to death, because principles got the better of him a decade past and he refused to kill an innocent man so when he is discovered alive when the records have been rigged to show he is dead, MI5 (or MI6) chief Manafort (Bill Nighy) wants him exterminated so, as in the Bourne series, some other assassin’s phone lights up and the hunt is on.
Logic is in complete absence. Mason’s been off the grid for a decade. Give him a few more years and he’d be dead from alcohol poisoning. And if you wanted to eliminate him, all you’d have to do is cut off his weekly supply of food and booze and wait for him to starve to death or sit in ambush till he leaves the island in his tiny boat.
Instead, some unknown person for no apparent reason has fitted (technology-wise) Mason up as a terrorist so MI5 (or MI6) go in all guns blazing only to discover he has an effective web of Rambo-style defences. He’s got a tech buddy (Daniel Mays) on Stornoway who can fix the tech problem but he’s dying of cancer so in no fit state to look after a, no matter how meek, teenager. So after more bloodshed, they’re off to London apparently secure in the knowledge that in the small matter of getting on and off the ferry required to take them to the mainland they can move unseen and that’s despite the fact that he’s been tracked using the tiniest available access points on all sorts of mobile phones and cameras on Stornoway.
Naturally, the only person who can get Jesse to safety in London is a drug trafficker and her freedom is complicated by the arrival of the same shady MI5 (or MI6) guys and genuine MI5 (or MI6) guys who couldn’t spot them traveling on any of the 400-odd miles it took to get them to the capital.
It’s not just Jason Statham going all gooey Dwayne Johnson that doesn’t make it work but the girl is a refugee from The Pony Club or National Velvet, a posh lassie who looks as though she’s had every inch of teenage-ness surgically removed and as if she’s never heard of Home Alone and hardly aware that you’ve got to show some spunk not mooch around complaining you’re going to be left alone while wanting (apparently) to be liked the murdering varmint accompanying you.
So with that relationship in screen terms dead in the water, the movie has to fall back on some garbled secret system called T.H.E.A. and an incredibly young incoming head of MI5 (or MI6) Roberta (Naomi Ackie) who looks young enough to be Jesse’s big sister (Ackie is only 35) whose job is to sort out the resultant mess.
I mentioned in a previous article how some careers were sustained by the overseas market rather than their box office returns in the U.S. and that’s been largely the case with Statham. Shelter stiffed on opening weekend in the U.S. taking just $5.5 million though it’s knocked up another $7.7 million worldwide.
Although Statham has had an unlikely hand up the Hollywood tree by being parachuted into the Fast and Furious franchise and being the leading man (or last man standing) for The Meg duo, his fortunes otherwise at the box office have been variable. The Beekeeper (2024) hit an unexpected $162 million worldwide ($66 million Stateside) and A Working Man (2025) delivered a tolerable $89 million worldwide ($37 million domestic) and even Wrath of Man, despite a poor $27 million in the U.S. crossed the $100 million mark when all other markets were taken into account.
Even so, I doubt if worldwide will redeem this one. I had thought after such a run of duds in January (and you can add Primate to the list) I could depend on Statham to redeem a poor month. Alas, no.
Directed by Ric Roman Waugh (Angel Has Fallen, 2019) from a screenplay by Ward Parry (The Shattering, 2015).
The Magnificent 60s 