BRIAN VINER reviews Shelter: Jason Statham slays everyone again (and his knitwear is to die for too)

Shelter (15, 107 mins)

Verdict: Jason and the juggernaut 

Rating:

Primate (18, 89 mins)

Verdict: Family pet goes ape 

Rating:

When a rugged, taciturn man played by Jason Statham lives alone with a dog in a disused lighthouse on a remote Scottish island, you can bet your last tray of Pedigree Chum that he'll turn out to be a special forces veteran, living off-grid because there are rotters in suits who want him dead.

There were glaring clues in Statham's last two films, A Working Man (2025) and The Beekeeper (2024), in which he played a special forces veteran trying to keep a low profile as, respectively, a construction-site foreman and, yes, a beekeeper.

This time, in Shelter, his character Michael Mason has gone a step further in pursuit of the quiet life – legging it to the Hebrides.

There, he unwittingly drags a young girl into the line of fire. This is Jesse, played by Bodhi Rae Breathnach, last seen in Hamnet as William Shakespeare's daughter Susanna. 

Aptly enough, it's a Shakespearean-level tempest that delivers her into the hands of Mason, who plunges into storm-tossed waters to save her. 

But in that time-honoured way of cinematic tough guys, he is then lumbered with an unwanted companion (see True Grit and dozens, if not hundreds, more).

Happily, Jesse is a doughty child, so when Mason's whereabouts become known to rogue elements in MI6, who duly issue a liquidation order, she takes in her stride the killing spree that ensues.

Mason, you see, can knock off a boat-load of commandos before breakfast, his voice never rising to more than a gruff whisper.

There is no such restraint with the film's ever-more histrionic music. 

The strings and percussion sections of an unseen orchestra do relentless battle to see which can more forcefully remind us we're watching an exciting action thriller.

Thus serenaded, Mason and Jesse make it to the mainland, where he deals with a few zealous Highlands and Islands cops, although less ruthlessly than he despatched the commandos. Live by the sword, die by the sword. 

Live by the taser, get temporarily incapacitated by the taser. That is our hero's honourable credo.

By now, however, he also has a formidable lone assassin on his tail, the only man able to give Mason a run for his money. 

Mind you, it's doubtful whether Mason has any money left having clearly spent a fortune on fabulous knitwear. There's not just an inter-agency kill order on his head, but also a designer beanie.

Mason's destination is London, but if his mind is straying to the Harvey Nichols sales he doesn't show it. 

He needs to get Jesse to safety, so takes her to a nightclub owned by a human-trafficker, who might be able to spirit her out of the country. 

Why a nightclub? So there will be murder on the dancefloor, of course, once a fresh set of operatives close in on him under the subtle cover of yet more throbbing music.

Will Jesse get away? Will Mason be squashed by the MI6 juggernaut? Will he ever stop whispering? You'll find no spoilers here. 

By the way, the supporting cast in Ric Roman Waugh's film includes Harriet Walter and Bill Nighy.

There are fewer deaths in Primate, but they're ten times more gruesome. 

The killer this time is a chimpanzee called Ben, and all it takes to turn him from a sweetheart into a psycho is a single bite from a rabid mongoose.

If there's a warning in this pulsating horror-thriller, by British director Johannes Roberts, it's this: don't treat a chimp like a family pet. 

If you thought the 1970s PG Tips adverts afforded your last opportunity to see a chimp dressed like a human being, then think again. Ben rocks a T-shirt and shorts.

Yet, while the worst thing that happened in the name of PG Tips was a piano sliding down a staircase, the misadventures here get much, much messier. Poor Rob Delaney, playing a vet, cops it even before the opening titles.

As I watched Ben go berserk, I wondered what the late primatologist Dame Jane Goodall would have made of all this. 

She saw only the good in chimps. Still, who can legislate for a rabid mongoose?

Certainly not Ben's owners, the Pinborough family, comprising Adam, a celebrated deaf-mute author (played by the deaf actor Troy Kotsur), and his daughters, Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah), a college student who has fatefully brought some friends home for the holidays, and her younger sister Erin (Gia Hunter).

Home, I should add, is a palatial dwelling on a Hawaiian clifftop. The Pinboroughs are rolling in it, but extreme affluence is unhelpful when there are screen psychos about, because they invariably seem to pick on the rich. 

The 'it' the Pinboroughs are rolling in predictably ends up being loads of blood, but amid all the extreme gore there is genuine suspense.

All films are in cinemas now.

This comic is a turn-off

Is This Thing On? (15, 121 mins) 

Verdict: Not for me  

Rating:

For those of you (like me) who think that 'John Bishop' and 'great stand-up comedy' belong in separate circles of the Venn diagram, it is startling to learn that a large chunk of the Runcorn comedian's life story has been turned into a film directed and co-written by Bradley Cooper, starring Will Arnett, Laura Dern and Cooper himself.

But so it has, and although it is easily the slightest of the three films Cooper has directed, after A Star Is Born (2018) and Maestro (2023), it Americanises in a mostly watchable way the singular origin of Bishop's comedy act.

Arnett plays Alex Novak, whose marriage to Tess (Dern) has produced two sons but has creaked apart. 

They separate, amicably enough, but when Alex is compelled to take the mic at Greenwich Village's famous Comedy Cellar, he finds he has plenty to say about his marital troubles.

More than that, it feels like therapy. Even better, it's fun.

He becomes a fixture on the stand-up circuit, which Tess discovers in the most dramatic way possible. 

Aided by his burgeoning new career, their relationship gradually begins to heal.

It's a touching story, and of course true, but unfortunately this over-long film makes it look fake. 

The problem is not the acting - Arnett and Dern are very good - but the writing. Alex might be modelled on a mediocre comic but his act still needs to be funny. It isn't. His midlife 'crisis' feels forced.

Similarly, Tess is meant to be a former volleyball international, but as soon as she breaks into a run it looks as if she has perhaps once seen an elite athlete, but has certainly never been one. 

Too much of the narrative rings false. And there are some hugely irritating peripheral characters, not least Alex's actor friend Balls (Cooper).

Long before the end, Is This Thing On? had turned me off.