I enjoyed the extra strength absurdity of THE BEEKEEPER, but man am I happy that Jason Statham can still make his serious movies. SHELTER is his latest, directed by Ric Roman Waugh (SNITCH, ANGEL HAS FALLEN) and written by Ward Parry (THE SHATTERING). This one’s more of a traditional action movie than REDEMPTION, but a little more grounded than HOMEFRONT. Maybe somewhere in the range of WILD CARD or SAFE. To me its familiar Statham tropes make it feel classical, not generic. These movies are like a good song or poem. They hit on themes we’ve explored a million times, but they do it with their own words and melodies.
Statham plays a guy named Michael Mason, but you don’t know that name until pretty far into the movie. He never says it, even when asked. He’s a grumpy loner living on a tiny Scottish island with only his dog (who doesn’t have a name at all). You assume this guy’s a lighthouse keeper until somebody says the lighthouse doesn’t even work. It’s always gloomy and stormy on this island, and when his friend and his friend’s teenage niece Jessie (Bodhi Rae Breathnach, HAMNET) come drop off supplies he never comes down to say hi, he just skulks around on his hill like some weird guy looking out the window of a mansion in an old horror movie. Jessie is such a sweetheart she tries to leave him presents to cheer him up but he won’t accept them. (read the rest of this shit…)
Occasionally during this Ronny Yu series I will go on tangents about films that are not directed by Ronny Yu, but are related to the topic at hand. I’ve been meaning to revisit my maybe-favorite-Brandon-Lee movie RAPID FIRE for years, and thought it would fit in well here. To be honest I forgot that 
If you enjoy the HAS FALLEN saga, now in its third chapter, you don’t need to read me disrespecting it in this review. I have no quarrel with you. But as much as I appreciate the existence of any ongoing theatrically released rated-R action series in this day and age, I have never achieved a worthwhile level of enjoyment from these fucking things.
In SNITCH, Benjamin Bratt (CATWOMAN) plays El Topo, a notorious ex-military badass who leads a Mexican drug cartel. He’s elusive to the authorities, preferring to stay back in a car and watch his underlings from afar, but when the shit goes down he’s the first to pull out a huge gun that looks like it should be mounted to a jeep. He’s very dangerous, especially to the naive Americans who he convinces to drive his drugs across the border. What they don’t understand is they don’t need to be working on a playlist for the drive back.
