Jason Statham’s latest first quarter action thriller is “Shelter”, and it’s a nice escape from heavier awards season stock. You would be hard-pressed to say “Shelter” breaks new ground. But it does fit snugly within Statham’s wheelhouse. And for fans of the 58-year-old’s specific brand of action, it has all the ingredients while hitting the familiar marks they’ve come to expect.

Stunt performer turned director Ric Roman Waugh follows up several solid collaborations with Gerard Butler (minus 2019’s “Angel Has Fallen”) with a Statham vehicle that’s built upon an easy to recognize foundation. A man with a secret past lives a quiet, discreet life until he’s pushed back into the life he had tried to put behind him. That’s literally the basic premise of Statham’s last two movies. And we get it again in “Shelter”, but with a small yet meaningful twist.

**Image Courtesy of Black Bear Pictures**

Statham plays Michael Mason, a former government assassin within MI6’s top-secret Black Kite program. Years earlier, Mason went rogue during a critical mission which made him a target of his own agency. As a result, Mason went off the grid, quietly living in an old lighthouse on a tiny island in the Scottish Isles. Once a week he’s left a crate of supplies by a young girl named Jessie (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) who comes to the island on her uncle’s boat. Otherwise he keeps to himself, living in seclusion and out of MI6’s eye.

After dropping off supplies, Jessie and her uncle get caught in a storm. Mason manages to save the injured girl, but her uncle drowns when their boat sinks. Realizing he needs medicine to treat Jessie’s injury, Mason risks exposing himself by going into the closest town. There his image is captured and funneled through MI6’s fancy new surveillance system where his old handler and MI6 dark agent Manafort (Bill Nighy) dispatches a kill squad to track down and eliminate his old asset and any witnesses.

Mason wastes no time offing Manafort’s team before taking Jessie on the run, using back channels and old connections to keep her safe. But Manafort intensifies his pursuit, revealing his own devious motives in the process. Meanwhile a driven and upright young agent named Roberta (Naomi Ackie) begins filling in the blanks to Mason’s backstory while discovering the real reason behind Manafort’s efforts to kill the best of his former assassins.

Most of “Shelter” follows Mason’s attempt to stay one step ahead of Manafort’s killers, from his island lighthouse to the rural countryside to downtown London. It’s laced with a variety of solid action scenes that includes car chases, shoot-outs, and (of course) some bone-cracking fight sequences. But the difference maker is Mason’s emerging relationship with Jessie. The father-daughter dynamic that forms adds heart. And both Statham and Breathnach breathe a surprising amount of life into it.

Yet outside of that, there’s not a lot here that we haven’t seen before. It’s a nagging issue that stayed in the back of my mind throughout. But Statham fans (a group I consider myself to be a part of) will find themselves at home with the action star’s latest. The film has its share of thrills, and the evolving relationship at its core gives “Shelter” a welcomed emotional kick that serves the movie well.